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Review Sovereign Multimedia Ltd  / Tillie's Punctured Romance [1914]
Actors & Directors
  • Mack Sennett
  • Marie Dressler
  • Charles Chaplin
  • Charles Bennett (II)
  • Mack Swain
  • Mabel Normand
Release date: 1998-08-24
Run time: 70 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £6.95

Review Tillie's Punctured Romance [1914] / Sovereign Multimedia Ltd:


Review 4 Front Video  / Every Girl Should Be Married [1948]
Actors & Directors
  • Don Hartman
  • Franchot Tone
  • Diana Lynn
  • Alan Mowbray
  • Cary Grant
  • Betsy Drake
Release date: 1998-01-12
Run time: 84 min.
Price: £5.99

Review Every Girl Should Be Married [1948] / 4 Front Video:


Review Vision Video Ltd.  / Laurel And Hardy - The Classics - Way Out West / Sons Of The Desert / The Music Box [1937]
Actors & Directors
  • Mae Busch
  • Stan Laurel
  • William A. Seiter
  • James Parrott
  • Charley Chase
  • Dorothy Christy
  • Oliver Hardy
Release date: 1999-10-18
Run time: 175 min.
Price: £12.99

Review Laurel And Hardy - The Classics - Way Out West / Sons Of The Desert / The Music Box [1937] / Vision Video Ltd.:

In Greek mythology, there is a cursed old King called Sisyphus who is punished in Hades by eternally having to push a heavy stone up a hill (as soon as he gets to the top, it comes rolling down). Sisyphus's closest relations in Hollywood are Stan and Ollie, whose punishment in The Music Box is delivering a piano to a house at the top of a seemingly interminable staircase. This Oscar-winning comedy short should be shown to anybody who doubts Laurel and Hardy's genius. It's one of their greatest films, as painful as it is funny to watch. Way Out West, their sole foray into cowboy country, benefits from their rousing rendition of "The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia" (a song which made it into the British charts a few years ago) and some inspired villainy from James Finlayson, the Scottish actor who was frequently cast as Stan and Ollie's nemesis (here, he plays villainous bartender Mickey Finn). The plot is some hokum about Stan and Ollie's attempts to deliver deeds to a gold mine to the daughter of an old pal. What matters is the clowning-most of which is inspired. In Sons of the Desert, the duo play truant from their wives to attend a Masonic lodge convention, but don't get away with the deception. -Geoffrey Macnab.

Actors & Directors
  • Horst Ebersberg
  • Dyan Cannon
  • Robert Culp
  • Paul Mazursky
  • Elliott Gould
  • Natalie Wood
Run time: 101 min.
RRP: £6.99
Price: £7.99

Review Bob And Carol And Ted And Alice [1969] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Warner Home Video  / Carry On Cleo [1964]
Actors & Directors
  • Sid James
  • Gerald Thomas
  • Joan Sims
  • Charles Hawtrey
  • Kenneth Williams
  • Kenneth Connor
Release date: 1997-08-18
Run time: 88 min.
RRP: £6.99
Price: £1.14

Review Carry On Cleo [1964] / Warner Home Video:


Review 4 Front Video  / The Quiet Man [1952]
Actors & Directors
  • Victor McLaglen
  • John Wayne
  • Barry Fitzgerald
  • Maureen O'Hara
  • John Ford
  • Ward Bond
Release date: 1999-10-01
Run time: 124 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £6.21

Review The Quiet Man [1952] / 4 Front Video:

Blarney and bliss, mixed in equal proportions. John Wayne plays an American boxer who returns to the Emerald Isle, his native land. What he finds there is a fiery prospective spouse (Maureen O'Hara) and a country greener than any Ireland seen before or since-it's no surprise The Quiet Man won an Oscar for cinematography. It also won an Oscar for John Ford's direction, his fourth such award. The film was a deeply personal project for Ford (whose birth name was Sean Aloysius O'Fearna), and he lavished all of his affection for the Irish landscape and Irish people on this film. He also stages perhaps the greatest donnybrook in the history of movies, an epic fistfight between Wayne and the truculent Victor McLaglen-that's Ford's brother, Francis, as the elderly man on his deathbed who miraculously revives when he hears word of the dustup. Barry Fitzgerald, the original Irish elf, gets the movie's biggest laugh when he walks into the newlyweds' bedroom the morning after their wedding and spots a broken bed. The look on his face says everything. The Quiet Man isn't the real Ireland but as a delicious never-never land of Ford's imagination, it will do very nicely. -Robert Horton.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment  / Sabrina Fair [1954]
Actors & Directors
  • Walter Hampden
  • Billy Wilder
  • William Holden
  • John Williams (II)
  • Audrey Hepburn
  • Humphrey Bogart
Release date: 1997-02-03
Run time: 109 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £2.34

Review Sabrina Fair [1954] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

Audrey Hepburn is the delightful, young, eponymous Sabrina, the daughter of a chauffeur who is hopelessly in love with David Larrabee (William Holden), the playboy younger son in the rich Long Island household her father works for. In order to help her forget her woes, Sabrina is shipped off to cooking school in Paris. While there, she befriends a baron who provides a bit of culture-and the encouragement to snip off her childlike ponytail. Upon her return to New York, Sabrina is transformed into a sophisticated woman, and David is entranced by her. However, his older brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart) has arranged David's marriage to Elizabeth Tyson in order to seal a business merger and thus must steer David away from Sabrina. To do this, Linus takes on the task of wooing her for himself. Full of great dialogue ("A woman happy in love, she burns the soufflé; a woman unhappy in love, she forgets to turn on the oven") and wonderful performances, this film is a romantic masterpiece. Also enjoyable is the 1995 remake, starring Julia Ormond and Harrison Ford. -Jenny Brown For almost 20 years Audrey Hepburn's pixie-like features lit up Hollywood's silver screens with hit after hit and she became not only a screen icon, but also a style icon (with a little help from Givenchy), and still features high in polls of the world's most beautiful women. It's perhaps no surprise, then, that Paramount have chosen to honour her with a box set of some of her best-known films. [+]
However, this is only "some of", with the absence of her dazzling performances in Roman Holiday and My Fair Lady, leaving three out of the four films included here lacking in comparison. Breakfast at Tiffany's is the strongest and certainly the best-loved Hepburn film in this collection, offering beautifully comic performances by both Hepburn and her leading man, George Peppard. Funny Face also makes a welcome entry, if only for the wonderful performance by Fred Astaire; Hepburn, though, was not a strong enough dancer to hold her own against Astaire's brilliance. Sabrina holds its own as the Cinderella story of a chauffeur's daughter who turns into a beautiful society girl, but it was clearly a quick and easy vehicle for Paramount to produce in the wake of Hepburn's success in Roman Holiday. The mysterious entry of the collection is Paris When It Sizzles, probably one of Hepburn's least-known and most quirky films, with two parallel love stories played out on the screen. Although not an obvious hit and hard work in places it offers an interesting screwball performance by Hepburn, even if the sparks did not fly with her screen partner William Holden. On the DVD: The Audrey Hepburn Collection offers a nice clean widescreen transfer for three of its movies, but Sabrina is a full-frame transfer that lacks something in comparison. All but Breakfast at Tiffany's (which has a 5. 1 Dolby Digital soundtrack) are mono sound transfers, which is only a real disappointment in Funny Face because of George and Ira Gershwin's score. The special features are also lacking, with only a trailer offered on two of the films and a mildly interesting documentary on Sabrina. The best is the featurette on Funny Face, which charts the success of Paramount in the 1950s, but offers nothing a film fan would not have known already. All in all this is an attractive box set, but perhaps one for the die-hard Hepburn fan only. -Nikki Disney.

Review Lumiere Pictures  / The Happiest Days Of Your Life [1950]
Actors & Directors
  • Frank Launder
  • Edward Rigby
  • Guy Middleton
  • Joyce Grenfell
  • Alastair Sim
  • Margaret Rutherford
Release date: 1995-08-21
Run time: 84 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £84.99

Review The Happiest Days Of Your Life [1950] / Lumiere Pictures:


Review Warner Home Video  / Green Man, The / Will Any Gentleman? [1956]
Actors & Directors
  • Jon Pertwee
  • Veronica Hurst
  • James Hayter
  • Heather Thatcher
  • Michael Anderson
  • George Cole
Release date: 1994-02-07
Run time: 156 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.80

Review Green Man, The / Will Any Gentleman? [1956] / Warner Home Video:


Review 4 Front Video  / Whisky Galore [1949]
Actors & Directors
  • Alexander Mackendrick
  • Bruce Seton
  • Catherine Lacey
  • Basil Radford
  • Joan Greenwood
  • Wylie Watson
Release date: 2001-01-08
Run time: 79 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £6.40

Review Whisky Galore [1949] / 4 Front Video:


Review Warner Home Video  / Hobson's Choice [1954]
Actors & Directors
  • Daphne Anderson
  • Brenda De Banzie
  • David Lean
  • Charles Laughton
  • John Mills
  • Prunella Scales
Release date: 2000-07-03
Run time: 102 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £17.80

Review Hobson's Choice [1954] / Warner Home Video:

Britain's greatest ever film director David Lean wasn't feted for providing belly-laughs. His finest films, from Great Expectations (1946) to Lawrence of Arabia (1962) are resolutely sober, which is more than can be said of Henry Horatio Hobson in his wonderfully comic encounter with the moon in Hobson's Choice. Lean's only other comedy was Blithe Spirit (1945), but here he approaches matters of the heart with a surprising lightness of touch and wins a marvellous performance from Charles Laughton-himself soon to make his one and only film as a director, Night of the Hunter (1955). The setting is late-19th century Salford (the b/w location filming is exceptional), and widower Henry Hobson forbids his three daughters to marry to avoid paying their dowries. Romance will not be thwarted by economics, and much humorous conflict ensues, interspersed with some serious and even disturbing moments-the shaving scene when Laughton gets the DTs is a queasily unbalanced. Brenda De Banzie is splendidly spirited as the eldest daughter, Maggie, while her fiancie is played by the ever excellent John Mills, who would later win an Oscar for his part in Lean's much more serious love story, Ryan's Daughter (1970). -Gary S. Dalkin.

Review Dd Home Entertainment  / No Limit [1935]
Actors & Directors
  • Montague Banks
  • Jack Hobbs
  • George Formby
  • Florence Desmond
  • Edward Rigby
Release date: 1999-09-06
Run time: 77 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £3.50

Review No Limit [1935] / Dd Home Entertainment:


Review 4 Front Video  / The Bells Of St. Mary's [1945]
Actors & Directors
  • Henry Travers
  • William Gargan
  • Leo McCarey
  • Ingrid Bergman
  • Ruth Donnelly
  • Bing Crosby
Release date: 1997-01-13
Run time: 126 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £6.38

Review The Bells Of St. Mary's [1945] / 4 Front Video:


Review Cinema Club  / Oh! Mr Porter [1937]
Actors & Directors
  • Agnes Lauchlan
  • Will Hay
  • Marcel Varnel
  • Sebastian Smith
  • Moore Marriott
  • Graham Moffatt
Release date: 1997-11-03
Run time: 80 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £2.50

Review Oh! Mr Porter [1937] / Cinema Club:


Review ITV DVD  / The Plank [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Jim Dale
  • Graham Stark
  • Tommy Cooper
  • Stratford Johns
  • Eric Sykes
  • Eric Sykes
Release date: 1992-06-01
Run time: 46 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £9.89

Review The Plank [1967] / ITV DVD:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment  / Monte Carlo or Bust [1969]
Actors & Directors
  • Susan Hampshire
  • Jack Hawkins
  • Dudley Moore
  • Tony Curtis
  • Peter Cook
Release date: 1996-07-15
Run time: 120 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £34.99

Review Monte Carlo or Bust [1969] / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Review 4 Front Video  / Father Goose [1964]
Actors & Directors
  • Cary Grant
  • Trevor Howard
  • Jack Good (II)
  • Ralph Nelson
  • Sharyl Locke
  • Leslie Caron
Release date: 1997-01-13
Run time: 112 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £14.99

Review Father Goose [1964] / 4 Front Video:


Review Warner Home Video  / Carry On Cowboy [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • Jim Dale
  • Gerald Thomas
  • Charles Hawtrey
  • Joan Sims
  • Sid James
  • Kenneth Williams
Release date: 1997-08-18
Run time: 90 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £2.99

Review Carry On Cowboy [1966] / Warner Home Video:

Made in the "classic" period of the series, 1966's Carry On Cowboy is a spoof Western set in Stodge City, about to suffer the arrival of black-hatted outlaw The Rumpo Kid, played by the less-than-youthful Sid James. Kenneth Williams is the aptly named Judge Burke, who appeals to Washington for help to combat this gunslinger and his henchmen. Assistance arrives in the form of Jim Dale's Marshall P Knutt, a drainage, sanitation and garbage expert from England, with a reference from Lady Pushing for doing a "good job on her main sludge channel", whose Christian name provokes a predictable misunderstanding. Fortunately, he's accompanied by Annie Oakley. As ever, much fun is to be had cheering/groaning along to double-entendres about "big ones", but never mind the script, feel the characters. Joan Sims does a good Mae West impression; Syd James "Ha hwa-ha-ha!"s his way through his part with his usual aplomb; the underrated Peter Butterworth is excellent as an inept Doctor; while Bernard Bresslaw adds to his impressively multi-ethnic CV, playing a Native American, with Charles Hawtrey as his incorrigible firewater-loving Chief. On the DVD: No extras, sadly, other than scene selection but Alan Hume's splendidly authentic colour lensing is suitably refurbished here. -David Stubbs.

Actors & Directors
  • Ronald Squire
  • Robert Morley
  • Michael Redgrave
  • Joan Hickson
  • Charles Crichton
  • Lionel Jeffries
Run time: 73 min.
Creator: Paul Soskin
Price: £10.99

Review Law And Disorder [1958] / Warner Home Video PES 38202:

When Percy Brand, a habitual confidence trickster, keeps being sent down, he goes to great lengths to ensure that his son Colin, does not find out about his criminal past. But when Colin becomes an assistant to the Judge, who is about to try Percy for his latest escapade, Percy and his gang have to come up with a plan, to stop them meeting in court.

Review Bfi Video  / Les Vacances De M.Hulot [1953] - Mr Hulot's Holiday Release date: 2004-11-29
Run time: 84 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £24.95

Review Les Vacances De M.Hulot [1953] - Mr Hulot's Holiday / Bfi Video:

Forefather of Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean, Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot-a recurring character in several of his movies-is a blithely clumsy troublemaker, an insouciant twit who leaves uproar in his wake without being aware of it. Trying to describe this 1953 comedy is next to impossible except to say it is a series of vignettes at a vacation resort, with the distracted Hulot providing a lot of laughs. Tati directs, and in a way what that really means is that he composes this movie with a perfect eye and ear for the comic possibilities in everything: composition, lighting, minimal marble-mouth dialogue, certain sounds (a duck call, a door repeatedly opening and shutting). This is a superior work that ranks among all-time classic comedies. -Tom Keogh.

Browse Comedy:

Models & Brands:
Tillie's Punctured Romance [1914], Every Girl Should Be Married [1948], Laurel And Hardy - The Classics - Way Out West / Sons Of The Desert / The Music Box [1937], Bob And Carol And Ted And Alice [1969], Carry On Cleo [1964], The Quiet Man [1952], Sabrina Fair [1954], The Happiest Days Of Your Life [1950], Green Man, The / Will Any Gentleman? [1956], Whisky Galore [1949], Hobson's Choice [1954], No Limit [1935], The Bells Of St. Mary's [1945], Oh! Mr Porter [1937], The Plank [1967], Monte Carlo or Bust [1969], Father Goose [1964], Carry On Cowboy [1966], Law And Disorder [1958], Les Vacances De M.Hulot [1953] - Mr Hulot's Holiday

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