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Review Champion the Wonder Horse / The Adventures Of Champion The Wonder Horse - Complete 6 DVD Set [1955]
Release date: 2005-09-19
Run time: 624 min.
RRP: £16.99
Price: £16.97

Review The Adventures Of Champion The Wonder Horse - Complete 6 DVD Set [1955] / Champion the Wonder Horse:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / The Longest Day - Single Disc Edition [1962]
Actors & Directors
  • Ken Annakin
  • Darryl F. Zanuck
  • Richard Beymer
  • Paul Anka
  • Andrew Marton
  • Arletty
  • Jean-Louis Barrault
  • Bernhard Wicki
  • Eddie Albert
Release date: 2003-10-13
Run time: 168 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £2.18

Review The Longest Day - Single Disc Edition [1962] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

After seeing Saving Private Ryan, this epic tale about the Normandy invasion will look sanitised. But in its re-creation of events leading to the epochal battle, The Longest Day is captivating and grand, and the parade of famous actors who cross the screen naturally give the already charged action even more of a boost. Three directors worked on it: Ken Annakin (Battle of the Bulge), Andrew Marton (Crack in the World) and Bernhard Wicki (this film being his only credit). -Tom Keogh The Longest Day is Hollywood's definitive D-day movie. More modern accounts such as Saving Private Ryan are more vividly realistic, but producer Darryl F Zanuck's epic 1962 account is the only one to attempt the daunting task of covering that fateful day from all perspectives. From the German high command and front-line officers to the French Resistance and all the key Allied participants, the screenplay by Cornelius Ryan, based on his own authoritative book, is as factually accurate as possible. The endless parade of stars (John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Sean Connery, and Richard Burton, to name a few) makes for an uneasy mix of verisimilitude and Hollywood star-power, however, and the film falls a little flat for too much of its three-hour running time. But the set-piece battles are still spectacular, and if the landings on Omaha Beach lack the graphic gore of Private Ryan they nonetheless show the sheer scale and audacity of the invasion. -Mark Walker.

Review ITV DVD / The Eagle Has Landed (Special Edition) [1977]
Actors & Directors
  • Robert Duvall
  • Donald Sutherland
  • Michael Caine
  • John Sturges
  • Larry Hagman
  • Jenny Agutter
Release date: 2007-06-11
Run time: 145 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £7.00

Review The Eagle Has Landed (Special Edition) [1977] / ITV DVD:


Review Starz Home Entertainment / The Lion Of The Desert
Release date: 2006-02-06
Run time: 156 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £3.09

Review The Lion Of The Desert / Starz Home Entertainment:


Review ITV DVD / Escape To Athena [1974]
Actors & Directors
  • George P. Cosmatos
  • Claudia Cardinale
  • Roger Moore
  • Telly Savalas
  • David Niven
  • Stefanie Powers
Release date: 2004-06-07
Run time: 114 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.91

Review Escape To Athena [1974] / ITV DVD:


Review Koch Media / The War Lord
Actors & Directors
  • Richard Boone
  • Maurice Evans
  • Guy Stockwell
  • Rosemary Forsyth
  • Charlton Heston
  • Franklin J. Schaffner
Release date: 2008-01-25
RRP: £17.99
Price: £12.31

Review The War Lord / Koch Media:


Review ITV DVD / Above Us The Waves [1955]
Actors & Directors
  • Michael Medwin
  • Donald Sinden
  • Ralph Thomas
  • John Mills
  • James Robertson Justice
  • John Gregson
Release date: 1999-10-11
Run time: 95 min.
RRP: £6.99
Price: £3.25

Review Above Us The Waves [1955] / ITV DVD:

Directed by Ralph Thomas, Above Us the Waves (1955) tells of a Royal Navy mission to sink the "invincible" German battleship Tirpitz, off the Norwegian coast. John Mills is calm and confident as the mission commander, with strong support from John Gregson and Donald Sinden-all treated by the German personnel as fellow gentlemen when captured. Despite stirring music from Arthur Benjamin, the action sequences are visually no more than adequate, and the film is only a partial success. -Richard Whitehouse.

Review 4 Front Video / Bend Of The River [1952]
Actors & Directors
  • James Stewart
  • Lori Nelson
  • Arthur Kennedy
  • Rock Hudson
  • Julie Adams
  • Anthony Mann
Release date: 2005-06-06
Run time: 89 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £3.98

Review Bend Of The River [1952] / 4 Front Video:


Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Warlock [1959]
Actors & Directors
  • Dorothy Malone
  • Edward Dmytryk
  • Henry Fonda
  • Richard Widmark
  • Anthony Quinn
Release date: 2005-02-21
Run time: 116 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £5.89

Review Warlock [1959] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review Optimum Home Entertainment / The War Collection Volume 1
Actors & Directors
  • Colin Tapley
  • Ursula Jeans
  • Michael Redgrave
  • Michael Anderson
  • Charles Carson
  • Stanley Van Beers
Release date: 2006-11-06
Run time: 334 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £8.64

Review The War Collection Volume 1 / Optimum Home Entertainment:

Something of a cult item among British war movies (and brilliantly spoofed a few years back by a lager ad), The Dam Busters turns a minor World War II incident into a saga of heroic stiff-upper-lippery in the classic British style. A bombing raid is proposed on a strategically vital Ruhr dam, but its position is inaccessible. Enter eccentric inventor Dr Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave in best daffy professor mode) who comes up with a genius idea-a bomb that will bounce on water like a skimmed pebble. Naturally the top brass pooh-pooh it, but gallant Wing Commander Guy Gibson (Richard Todd) is persuaded, and between them flyer and boffin forge ahead. The touches of carefully understated emotion now verge on self-parody, but it's hard not to get caught up in the narrative sweep, especially when the bombers take off on their mission and Eric Coates' stirring march hits the soundtrack. The modelwork, state-of-the-art for its early 1950s period, still looks impressive, and the death of Gibson's beloved black Labrador (embarrassingly called Nigger) is a three-hanky moment to rival the shooting of Bambi's mum. -Philip Kemp.

Review MGM Entertainment / The Indian Fighter [1955]
Actors & Directors
  • Walter Matthau
  • Diana Douglas
  • Walter Abel
  • Lon Chaney Jr.
  • Andre De Toth
  • Kirk Douglas
Release date: 2005-03-14
Run time: 88 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.25

Review The Indian Fighter [1955] / MGM Entertainment:


Review United Artists / The Sergeants 3 [1962] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Frank Sinatra
  • Joey Bishop
  • Sammy Davis Jnr
  • Dean Martin
  • Peter Lawford
Release date: 2008-05-13
Run time: 113 min.
Price: £5.13

Review The Sergeants 3 [1962] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / United Artists:


Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / The Man From Colorado [1949]
Actors & Directors
  • Glenn Ford
  • Ellen Drew
  • Edgar Buchanan
  • William Holden
  • Henry Levin
  • Jerome Courtland
Release date: 2006-06-05
Run time: 98 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.50

Review The Man From Colorado [1949] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:


Review MGM Entertainment / Duel At Diablo [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • Sidney Poitier
  • James Garner
  • Ralph Nelson
  • Bill Travers
  • Bibi Andersson
  • John Hoyt
Release date: 2004-03-01
Run time: 100 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.98

Review Duel At Diablo [1966] / MGM Entertainment:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / The Enemy Below [1957]
Actors & Directors
  • David Hedison
  • Robert Mitchum
  • Theodore Bikel
  • Dick Powell
  • Curt Jurgens
Release date: 2005-08-01
Run time: 93 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £1.49

Review The Enemy Below [1957] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review MGM Entertainment / A Fistful Of Dollars [1964] [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Monte Hellman
  • Wolfgang Lukschy
  • Gian Maria Volontè
  • Clint Eastwood
  • Marianne Koch
  • Sieghardt Rupp
  • Sergio Leone
Release date: 2000-02-07
Run time: 98 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £2.80

Review A Fistful Of Dollars [1964] [1967] / MGM Entertainment:

This is the movie that launched the spaghetti Western and catapulted Clint Eastwood to stardom. Before director Sergio Leone picked him out, Clint had played only a few bit parts in features plus his role as Rowdy Yates in the TV Western series Rawhide. Leone cast him for his stillness and physical presence, famously remarking that when Michelangelo was asked what he had seen in a particular block of marble, he said Moses, but that what he, Leone, saw in Eastwood was just that, a block of marble. Leone also claimed that it was he who gave the character his trademark cigar and poncho, though Eastwood has said he brought his own wardrobe to Italy. Whoever takes credit, A Fistful of Dollars (Per un pugno di dollari in Italian) was an extraordinary success when launched in Italy in 1964. Eastwood had to wait longer for it to be a hit in the USA. The film was based on Kurosawa's 1961 samurai picture Yojimbo, but Leone had forgotten to clear the copyright. Eventually a deal was done, but A Fistful of Dollars was not released in the USA until 1967. It scored an equally resounding success, as did its sequels in the Dollar Trilogy, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The advertising campaign promoted Eastwood's character, laconic, amoral, dangerous, as The Man with No Name (though in the film he's clearly referred to as Joe), and audiences loved the film's refreshing new take on the Western genre. [+]
Gone are the pieties about making the streets safe for women and children (women are virtually absent from the Trilogy). Instead it's every man for himself. Striking too was a new emphasis on violence, with stylised, almost balletic gunfights and baroque touches such as Eastwood's armoured breastplate. The popularity of the Dollars films had a marked influence on the Hollywood Western, for example Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, but its most enduring legacy is Clint Eastwood himself, still in action at the age of 70. -Edward Buscombe.

Review Universal Pictures UK / Johnny Guitar [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • Nicholas Ray
  • Ward Bond
  • Mercedes McCambridge
  • Scott Brady
  • Joan Crawford
  • Sterling Hayden
Release date: 2006-09-18
Run time: 105 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £5.98

Review Johnny Guitar [1963] / Universal Pictures UK:

"I've never seen a woman who was more like a man," a character observes of Vienna (Joan Crawford), who has just opened a saloon that hasn't exactly endeared itself to the local townspeople. Emma (Mercedes McCambridge), the local sexually repressed, lynch-happy harpy, is particularly displeased. Vienna is wooed both by the Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady) and by Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), a peripatetic tough guy-turned-troubadour with whom she has a past. When the Kid's gang (which includes Ernest Borgnine) decides to knock over the bank before heading to California, Emma wants just about everyone in sight on the business end of a rope. Nicolas Ray's 1954 epic was considered one of the downright strangest Westerns of all time-the women were far tougher than the men (Johnny watches on laconically during the bank robbery, not bothering with heroics), and some saw in the film a bizarre allegory for the McCarthy Red scare. A half-century later, it's still a curious, intriguing piece of moral ambiguity from a time when such a thing ostensibly didn't exist. Hayden is an enigmatic presence, and Crawford's commanding star turn is what you'd expect. -David Kronke.

Review Wienerworld Ltd / The Silent Enemy [1958]
Actors & Directors
  • William Fairchild
  • Laurence Harvey
  • David Lodge
  • Brian Oulton
  • Dawn Addams
  • Ewen Solon
Release date: 2004-09-06
Run time: 107 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £1.79

Review The Silent Enemy [1958] / Wienerworld Ltd:


Review Warner Home Video / Errol Flynn Westerns [2008] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • James Brown (II)
  • Douglas Kennedy
  • S.Z. Sakall
  • Errol Flynn
  • Michael Curtiz
  • Raoul Walsh
  • Ray Enright
  • Robert Florey
  • Alexis Smith
Release date: 2008-08-26
Run time: 389 min.
Price: £21.46

Review Errol Flynn Westerns [2008] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Warner Home Video:


Review MGM Entertainment / Support Your Local Sheriff [1969]
Actors & Directors
  • James Garner
  • Burt Kennedy
  • Jack Elam
  • Harry Morgan
  • Joan Hackett
  • Walter Brennan
Release date: 2004-07-05
Run time: 89 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.97

Review Support Your Local Sheriff [1969] / MGM Entertainment:


Models & Brands:
The Adventures Of Champion The Wonder Horse - Complete 6 DVD Set [1955], The Longest Day - Single Disc Edition [1962], The Eagle Has Landed (Special Edition) [1977], The Lion Of The Desert, Escape To Athena [1974], The War Lord, Above Us The Waves [1955], Bend Of The River [1952], Warlock [1959], The War Collection Volume 1, The Indian Fighter [1955], The Sergeants 3 [1962] (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Man From Colorado [1949], Duel At Diablo [1966], The Enemy Below [1957], A Fistful Of Dollars [1964] [1967], Johnny Guitar [1963], The Silent Enemy [1958], Errol Flynn Westerns [2008] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Support Your Local Sheriff [1969]

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