Video Find the Perfect Gift    Send a Gift Certificate
Search 
HomeClassic Films › Drama
Review 2 Entertain Video  / Suddenly, Last Summer [1959]
Actors & Directors
  • Elizabeth Taylor
  • Montgomery Clift
  • Katharine Hepburn
  • Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Release date: 1998-08-03
Run time: 110 min.
RRP: £4.99
Price: £14.94

Review Suddenly, Last Summer [1959] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Carlton Visual Entertainment Ltd  / Lydia [1941]
Actors & Directors
  • Julien Duvivier
  • Alan Marshal
  • Edna May Oliver
  • Hans Jaray
  • Joseph Cotten
  • Merle Oberon
Release date: 1997-10-13
Run time: 94 min.
Creator: Samuel Hoffenstein
Price: £12.99

Review Lydia [1941] / Carlton Visual Entertainment Ltd:


Review Reeltime Pictures  / Doctor Who Return to Devils End [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • Patrick Troughton
  • William Hartnell
  • Tom Baker
  • Peter Davison
  • Jon Pertwee
Release date: 1997-04-14
Run time: 55 min.
Creator: Sydney Newman
Price: £10.99

Review Doctor Who Return to Devils End [1963] / Reeltime Pictures:


Review Warner Home Video  / Lord Of The Flies [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • James Aubrey
  • Tom Gaman
  • Tom Chapin
  • Hugh Edwards
  • Peter Brook
  • Roger Elwin
Release date: 1999-07-12
Run time: 87 min.
Creator: William Golding
RRP: £9.99
Price: £10.53

Review Lord Of The Flies [1963] / Warner Home Video:

In this classic 1963 adaptation of William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies, a planeload of schoolboys are stranded on a tropical island. They've got food and water; all that's left is to govern themselves peacefully until they are rescued. "After all", says choir leader Jack, "We're English. We're the best in the world at everything!" Unfortunately, living peacefully is not as easy as it seems. Though Ralph is named chief, Jack and the choristers quickly form a clique of their own, using the ever-effective political promise of fun rather than responsibility to draw converts. Director Peter Brook draws some excellent performances out of his young cast: the moment when Ralph realises that even if he blows the conch for a meeting people might not come is an excruciating one. Well acted and faithfully executed, Lord of the Flies is as compelling today as when first released. -Ali Davis.

Review Tartan Video  / Kwaidan [1965]
Actors & Directors
  • Masaki Kobayashi
  • Misako Watanabe
  • Keiko Kishi
  • Michiyo Aratama
  • Tatsuya Nakadai
  • Rentaro Mikuni
Release date: 1994-04-11
Run time: 154 min.
Creator: Yôko Mizuki
RRP: £15.99
Price: £24.95

Review Kwaidan [1965] / Tartan Video:

Lafcadio Hearn, the Greek-Irish-American author turned Japanese citizen, was one of the most singular writers of the 19th century, and from his collection of traditional Japanese ghost stories the director Masaki Kobayashi fashioned one of the most eerily beautiful films ever made. Kwaidan was Kobayashi's first film in colour; spurning realism and aiming for "the ultimate in stylised film method", he shot the whole movie inside a huge disused hangar, painting all the sets himself. The film comprises four stories: in "Black Hair" a man returns to seek the wife he abandoned; "The Woman of the Snows" is a chilly, beautiful spirit who preys on lone travellers; "Hoichi the Earless" tells of a young monk compelled each night by ghostly warriors to recount the saga of a famous sea battle (when he tries to evade them, they exact a horrible revenge); and the luckless protagonist of "In a Cup of Tea" discovers someone's soul grinning at him out of his beverage. Each story sustains its own distinct mood, but all four share an unsettling, dreamlike sense of otherworldliness. To enhance the overall weirdness, Kobayashi worked closely with the composer Toru Takemitsu to create an offbeat score, rejecting conventional instruments in favour of sonic effects such as wood being split and pebbles being struck together. There has never been another ghost film quite like this. -Philip Kemp.

Review Warner Home Video  / The Two Mrs Carrolls [1945]
Actors & Directors
  • Peter Godfrey|Humphrey Bogart|Barbara Stanwyck|Alexis Smith
Run time: 95 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £14.99

Review The Two Mrs Carrolls [1945] / Warner Home Video:


Actors & Directors
  • Phyllis Calvert
  • Robert Beatty
  • Herbert Lom
  • Anthony Asquith
  • Muriel Pavlow
  • James Donald
Run time: 82 min.
RRP: £2.99
Price: £12.75

Review The Net (1953) / VCI VC3548:


Review Warner Home Video  / A Streetcar Named Desire [1951]
Actors & Directors
  • Marlon Brando
  • Elia Kazan
  • Kim Hunter
  • Rudy Bond
  • Vivien Leigh
  • Karl Malden
Release date: 2000-02-14
Run time: 119 min.
Creator: Tennessee Williams
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.95

Review A Streetcar Named Desire [1951] / Warner Home Video:

Looking for a benchmark in movie acting? Breakthrough performances don't come much more electrifying than Marlon Brando's animalistic turn as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Sweaty, brutish, mumbling, yet with the balanced grace of a prize-fighter, Brando storms through the role-a role he had originated in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's celebrated play. Stanley and his wife, Stella (as in Brando's oft-mimicked line, "Hey, Stellaaaaaa!"), are the earthy couple in New Orleans's French Quarter whose lives are upended by the arrival of Stella's sister, Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh). Blanche, a disturbed, lyrical, faded Southern belle, is immediately drawn into a battle of wills with Stanley, beautifully captured in the differing styles of the two actors. This extraordinarily fine adaptation won acting Oscars for Leigh, Kim Hunter (as Stella) and Karl Malden (as Blanche's clueless suitor), but not for Brando. Although it had already been considerably cleaned up from the daringly adult stage play, director Elia Kazan was forced to trim a few of the franker scenes he had shot. In 1993, Streetcar was re-released in a "director's cut" that restored these moments, deepening a film that had already secured its place as an essential American work. -Robert Horton.

Review 2 Entertain Video  / Hondo [1954]
Actors & Directors
  • Michael Pate
  • John Farrow
  • Geraldine Page
  • John Wayne
  • James Arness
  • Ward Bond
Release date: 1998-07-06
Run time: 79 min.
Creator: Louis L'Amour
RRP: £5.99
Price: £10.77

Review Hondo [1954] / 2 Entertain Video:


Actors & Directors
  • Ursula Andress
  • Sidney Hayers
  • Orson Welles
  • Harry Andrews
  • George Segal
Run time: 102 min.
Creator: Roger Duchet

Review The Southern Star [1969] / RCA Columbia CVT10213:

The Southern Star is a very big diamond. Someone steals it. George Segal and Ursula Andress, pursued by Ian Hendry, all hampered by the dipsomaniac homosexual ex-Major Orson Welles, attempt to retrieve it, and have encounters with wildlife, humour and danger along the way.

Review Second Sight Films Ltd.  / Les Cousins [1959]
Actors & Directors
  • Gérard Blain
  • Jean-Claude Brialy
  • Juliette Mayniel
  • Geneviève Cluny
  • Claude Chabrol
  • Guy Decomble
Release date: 2000-07-10
Run time: 105 min.
Creator: Paul Gégauff
Price: £15.99

Review Les Cousins [1959] / Second Sight Films Ltd.:

Arriving from the provinces to embark on his studies, naïve, plodding country cousin Charles (Gérard Blain) finds himself way out of his depth as he struggles to negotiate the niceties and posturing of Parisian student life in the fast lane at the end of the '50s. Try as he might, his stay at the home of his sophisticated, cynical, hard-living cousin Paul (Jean-Claude Brialy) turns into a harsh lesson in modern urban living. In almost every respect, Les Cousins is the mirror image of Chabrol's depiction of rural France in his earlier film Le Beau Serge. Brialy and Blain essentially reprise their roles in an urban context, and-despite some exemplary New Wave glimpses of Paris from speeding cars-Le Beau Serge's extended flirtation with the documentary form is here ousted by crisp expressionistic cinematography and taut editing. Les Cousins presents a fable about moral confusion as traditional French values come under threat from burgeoning post-war consumerism. Chabrol repeatedly foregrounds the superficiality of Paul's circle of friends, with their tastes for fast cars, expensive apartments, and militaristic ritual and guns. Meanwhile the lucid exploration of the overlap between hedonism and fascism in 1950s Paris serves as a sharp reminder of the deep roots of neo-fascist politics in contemporary France. -Michael Witt.

Review Warner Home Video  / Forbidden Planet [1956]
Actors & Directors
  • Fred M. Wilcox
  • Warren Stevens
  • Leslie Nielsen
  • Jack Kelly
  • Anne Francis
  • Walter Pidgeon
Release date: 1995-07-17
Run time: 94 min.
Creator: William Shakespeare
RRP: £5.99
Price: £18.79

Review Forbidden Planet [1956] / Warner Home Video:

This 1956 pop adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest is one of the best, most influential science fiction movies ever made. Its space explorers are the models for the crew of Star Trek's Enterprise, and the film's robot is clearly the prototype for Robby in Lost in Space. Walter Pidgeon is the Prospero figure, presiding over a paradisiacal world with his lovely young daughter and their servile droid. When the crew of a spaceship lands on the planet, they become aware of a sinister invisible force that threatens to destroy them. Great special effects and a bizarre electronic score help make Forbidden Planet as fresh, imaginative and fun as it was when first released.

Review Warner Home Video  / Sergeant York [1941]
Actors & Directors
  • Joan Leslie
  • George Tobias
  • Howard Hawks
  • Stanley Ridges
  • Gary Cooper
  • Walter Brennan
Release date: 2000-02-14
Run time: 129 min.
Creator: Tom Skeyhill
RRP: £9.99
Price: £17.45

Review Sergeant York [1941] / Warner Home Video:


Review MGM Entertainment  / Petrified Forest/Marked Woman [1936]
Actors & Directors
  • Archie Mayo|Leslie Howard|Bette Davis|Genevieve Tobin
Release date: 1994-07-04
Run time: 171 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £18.90

Review Petrified Forest/Marked Woman [1936] / MGM Entertainment:


Actors & Directors
  • Flora Robson
  • David Niven
  • William Wyler
  • Donald Crisp
  • Laurence Olivier
  • Merle Oberon
Release date: 1996-11-18
Run time: 100 min.
Creator: John Huston
RRP: £4.99
Price: £4.99

Review Wuthering Heights [1939] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment  / The Diary Of Anne Frank [1959]
Actors & Directors
  • Joseph Schildkraut
  • George Stevens
  • Millie Perkins
  • Shelley Winters
  • Richard Beymer
  • Gusti Huber
Release date: 1995-05-01
Run time: 177 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.35

Review The Diary Of Anne Frank [1959] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment  / Heidi [1937]
Actors & Directors
  • Shirley Temple
  • Jean Hersholt
  • Thomas Beck
  • Helen Westley
  • Arthur Treacher
  • Allan Dwan
Release date: 1989-05-11
Run time: 84 min.
Creator: Walter Ferris
Price: £5.99

Review Heidi [1937] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Second Sight Films Ltd.  / The Leather Boys [1964]
Actors & Directors
  • Dudley Sutton
  • Sidney J. Furie
  • Gladys Henson
  • Colin Campbell
  • Rita Tushingham
  • Avice Landone
Release date: 1998-04-27
Run time: 107 min.
Creator: Gillian Freeman
RRP: £12.99
Price: £8.24

Review The Leather Boys [1964] / Second Sight Films Ltd.:


Review 4 Front Video  / The Lives Of A Bengal Lancer [1934]
Actors & Directors
  • Guy Standing
  • C. Aubrey Smith
  • Henry Hathaway
  • Richard Cromwell
  • Franchot Tone
  • Gary Cooper
Release date: 2000-02-07
Run time: 106 min.
Creator: Waldemar Young
RRP: £5.99
Price: £84.99

Review The Lives Of A Bengal Lancer [1934] / 4 Front Video:


Review Warner Home Video  / King Of Kings [1961]
Actors & Directors
  • Jeffrey Hunter
  • Nicholas Ray
  • Viveca Lindfors
  • Siobhan McKenna
  • Hurd Hatfield
  • Ron Randell
Release date: 2000-02-14
Run time: 164 min.
Creator: Ray Bradbury
RRP: £9.99
Price: £11.95

Review King Of Kings [1961] / Warner Home Video:

This 1961 version of Jesus' story gives historical context to the best-known biblical tale and features many memorable moments, such as a moving Sermon on the Mount and a vixen-like Salome dancing for her stepfather in a performance that rivals today's MTV video offerings. Orson Welles keeps the 168-minute film moving along with informative narration. Made with backgrounds that resemble Southern California more than Palestine and a European and American cast-including a blonde, blue-eyed Jesus and an Irish-accented Mary-this movie has the definite stamp of Hollywood. -Kimberly Heinrichs, Amazon. com.

Browse Drama:

Models & Brands:
Suddenly, Last Summer [1959], Lydia [1941], Doctor Who Return to Devils End [1963], Lord Of The Flies [1963], Kwaidan [1965], The Two Mrs Carrolls [1945], The Net (1953), A Streetcar Named Desire [1951], Hondo [1954], The Southern Star [1969], Les Cousins [1959], Forbidden Planet [1956], Sergeant York [1941], Petrified Forest/Marked Woman [1936], Wuthering Heights [1939], The Diary Of Anne Frank [1959], Heidi [1937], The Leather Boys [1964], The Lives Of A Bengal Lancer [1934], King Of Kings [1961]

Top headlines:
Search 
DVD Rental: try it for free