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Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / The Longest Day [1962]
Actors & Directors
  • Robert Ryan
  • Bernhard Wicki
  • Darryl F. Zanuck
  • Richard Burton
  • John Wayne
  • Henry Fonda
  • Ken Annakin
  • Andrew Marton
  • Robert Mitchum
Release date: 1998-02-23
Run time: 168 min.
Creator: James Jones
RRP: £9.99
Price: £1.95

Review The Longest Day [1962] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

After seeing Saving Private Ryan, this epic tale about the Normandy invasion will look sanitised. But in The Longest Day's re-creation of events leading to the epochal battle, the film 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.

Actors & Directors
  • Sergei Bonarchuk
  • A Popov
  • Sergei Yutkevich
Release date: 1992-01-20
Run time: 103 min.
Price: £14.99

Review Othello [1955] / Hendring:


Review Odyssey Video / While The City Sleeps [1956]
Actors & Directors
  • Rhonda Fleming
  • Thomas Mitchell
  • George Sanders
  • Howard Duff
  • Dana Andrews
  • Fritz Lang
Release date: 1999-10-01
Run time: 95 min.
Creator: Charles Einstein
RRP: £10.99
Price: £19.39

Review While The City Sleeps [1956] / Odyssey Video:


Review Warner Home Video / Ice Cold In Alex [1958]
Actors & Directors
  • Harry Andrews
  • J. Lee Thompson
  • John Mills
  • Anthony Quayle
  • Diane Clare
  • Sylvia Syms
Release date: 2000-06-19
Run time: 132 min.
Creator: T.J. Morrison
RRP: £10.99
Price: £4.90

Review Ice Cold In Alex [1958] / Warner Home Video:

The title Ice Cold in Alex refers to the beer the heroes of this 1958 British World War Two classic plan to drink in Alexandria, once they have escaped from the Germans, negotiated minefields and survived both mechanical failure and the killing heat of the North African sands. The setting is Libya in 1942, at the height of the campaigns featured in The Desert Fox (1951) and The Desert Rats (1953), and a disparate group in a military ambulance-which include a Nazi agent to add tension of one kind and a beautiful nurse to add tension of another-must make an epic journey to safety. Staring John Mills, Sylvia Sims, Anthony Quayle and Harry Andrews the terror and poignancy comes from our certainty that not everyone will survive, such that the suspense sometimes reaches near unbearable levels. Director J Lee-Thomson was clearly inspired by the then recent French masterpiece, The Wages of Fear (1952) and handles both the character drama and set-pieces with great skill. He would go on to make another great war adventure, The Guns of Navarone (1961), also starring Anthony Quayle, who then returned to the desert for the ultimate British war classic, Lawrence of Arabia (1962). -Gary S. Dalkin.

Review ITV DVD / Hunted [1952]
Actors & Directors
  • Frederick Piper
  • Charles Crichton
  • Geoffrey Keen
  • Kay Walsh
  • Elizabeth Sellars
  • Dirk Bogarde
Release date: 1995-09-18
Run time: 81 min.
Creator: Michael McCarthy
Price: £12.99

Review Hunted [1952] / ITV DVD:


Review Connoisseur Video / Scorsese x 4 [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • Martin Scorsese
Release date: 2000-01-24
Run time: 75 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £9.80

Review Scorsese x 4 [1963] / Connoisseur Video:


Review Dd Home Entertainment / Richard III [1955]
Actors & Directors
  • Laurence Olivier
  • Cedric Hardwicke
  • Laurence Olivier
  • John Gielgud
  • Nicholas Hannen
  • Ralph Richardson
Release date: 2001-08-06
Run time: 150 min.
Creator: William Shakespeare
RRP: £12.99
Price: £9.98

Review Richard III [1955] / Dd Home Entertainment:

The third and final entry in Laurence Olivier's Shakespeare triptych, Richard III is an audacious portrait of a man determined to prove himself a villain. A pure master of the political stage, Richard deploys a barrage of odious, unscrupulous traps in an attempt to exercise complete control over his rivals. As the personification of evil impudence, Olivier portrays the Duke of Gloucester with such aplomb that he even lures the audience on to his side. This is true even as Richard engineers plots to murder his brother Clarence (John Gielgud), betray his cousin Buckingham (Ralph Richardson) and seduce his niece Lady Anne (Claire Bloom). From the play's famous opening lines ("Now is the winter of our discontent"), Olivier delivers every speech with truly Machiavellian splendour. As usual, his voice is a force of nature-a full-bodied coloratura at one moment, an earthy baritone cello a few beats later. As a director, Olivier fully realises but underplays the corners of the script that most directors would hinge their dramatisation on. But he can also play it large: Olivier's superb staging of the climactic battle rivals his work on Henry V. Though Richard is finally brought down by the whispered curses of Queen Margaret, the audience exits feeling that the journey has been both entertaining and complete. Regrettably, this would be Olivier's last Shakespeare film, as a planned adaptation of Macbeth was abandoned for financial reasons. [+]
Olivier justly received an Oscar nomination for his performance; and believe it or not, this film was the inspiration for the original Blackadder! -Kevin Mulhall.

Actors & Directors
  • Martita Hunt
  • Colin Gordon
  • Elizabeth Allan
  • Alastair Sim
  • Frank Launder
  • Roland Culver
Release date: 1994-11-28
Run time: 171 min.
Creator: John Dighton

Review Inspector Calls, An / Folly To Be Wise [1953] / Lumiere Pictures:


Review Connoisseur Video / The Quare Fellow [1962]
Actors & Directors
  • Dermot Kelly
  • Sylvia Syms
  • Walter Macken
  • Arthur Dreifuss
  • Jack Cunningham
  • Patrick McGoohan
Release date: 2000-01-24
Run time: 86 min.
Creator: Jacqueline Sundstrom
RRP: £12.99
Price: £16.95

Review The Quare Fellow [1962] / Connoisseur Video:


Review Fremantle Home Entertainment / Too Late The Hero [1969]
Actors & Directors
  • Harry Andrews
  • Robert Aldrich
  • Cliff Robertson
  • Ronald Fraser
  • Michael Caine
  • Ian Bannen
Release date: 2001-04-02
Run time: 129 min.
Creator: Robert Sherman
RRP: £5.99
Price: £1.59

Review Too Late The Hero [1969] / Fremantle Home Entertainment:

Set on a Pacific island in 1942, Too Late the Hero is a hard-as-nails "men on a mission" war movie: a group of British soldiers have to traverse the New Hebrides to destroy a Japanese radio transmitter, then get back to safety while being hunted all the way. Inevitably everything goes wrong, but director Robert (The Dirty Dozen) Aldrich turns the book of WWII movie clichés on its head and springs some unnerving surprises. Even the token American star, Cliff Robertson-echoing William Holden's grafted-on role in The Bridge on the River Kwai-proves less than obviously heroic, while an outstanding Michael Caine brings considerable depth to his usual cynical cockney. Henry Fonda gets heavily billed for a brief guest appearance, but there are star performances such fine British character actors as Denholm Elliot, Ian Bannen, Ronald Fraser and Lance Percival. This portrait of battle-worn men offers greater complexity than Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, while the jungle trek was more recently paralleled in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. Only the attitudes-more 1970 than 1942-detract from Aldrich's tellingly realistic vision, which with a thoughtfully ironic script and a succession of tense set pieces and brutal firefights, builds to a harrowing climax. On the DVD: The picture is presented at approximately 1. 7:1, reformatted from the original 2. 2:1 70mm theatrical presentation. Despite approximately 25 per cent of the original image being missing, this loss is only really noticeable in a few scenes. [+]
Apart from the occasional fleck, the print is in superb condition, and despite the lack of anamorphic enhancement the picture is sharp, detailed and has excellent colour. The surround sound (not mono as listed on the packaging) is highly effective, with the tension being increased by a considerable amount of the music coming from the rear speakers. The special features are simply a few static pages of biographical and production notes. -Gary S. Dalkin.

Review 2 Entertain Video / Doctor Who The Ark in Space [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • John Gorrie
  • Richard Martin (IV)
  • Tom Baker
  • Elizabeth Sladen
  • Ian Marter
Release date: 2000-01-24
Run time: 98 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £4.99

Review Doctor Who The Ark in Space [1963] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Carlton Visual Entertainment Ltd / Rembrandt [1936]
Actors & Directors
  • Alexander Korda
  • Walter Hudd
  • Charles Laughton
  • Edward Chapman
  • Elsa Lanchester
  • Gertrude Lawrence
Release date: 1999-06-14
Run time: 80 min.
Creator: Lajos Biró
RRP: £5.99
Price: £9.95

Review Rembrandt [1936] / Carlton Visual Entertainment Ltd:


Review Warner Home Video / Belle De Jour (1967)
Actors & Directors
  • Michel Piccoli
  • Geneviève Page
  • Jean Sorel
  • Catherine Deneuve
  • Luis Buñuel
  • Pierre Clémenti
Release date: 2000-05-15
Run time: 95 min.
Creator: Joseph Kessel
RRP: £9.99
Price: £8.40

Review Belle De Jour (1967) / Warner Home Video:


Review MGM Entertainment / The Fortune Cookie [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Jack Lemmon
  • Walter Matthau
  • Judi West
  • Billy Wilder
  • Ron Rich
  • Cliff Osmond
Release date: 2000-04-10
Run time: 121 min.
Creator: I.A.L. Diamond
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.70

Review The Fortune Cookie [1967] / MGM Entertainment:


Review Leisureview Ltd. / The Pickwick Papers [1952]
Actors & Directors
  • Noel Langley
  • James Donald
  • Joyce Grenfell
  • Nigel Patrick
  • James Hayter
  • Hermione Gingold
Release date: 1999-10-18
Run time: 105 min.
Creator: Charles Dickens
RRP: £9.99
Price: £9.95

Review The Pickwick Papers [1952] / Leisureview Ltd.:


Review Second Sight Films Ltd. / Secret Beyond The Door [1948]
Actors & Directors
  • Joan Bennett
  • Fritz Lang
  • Michael Redgrave
  • Barbara O'Neil
  • Anne Revere
  • Natalie Schafer
Release date: 1997-07-28
Run time: 94 min.
Creator: Silvia Richards
RRP: £12.99
Price: £10.00

Review Secret Beyond The Door [1948] / Second Sight Films Ltd.:


Review Odyssey Video / The Naked And The Dead [1958]
Actors & Directors
  • Raymond Massey
  • Cliff Robertson
  • Raoul Walsh
  • Lili St. Cyr
  • Aldo Ray
  • Barbara Nichols
Run time: 130 min.
Creator: Terry Sanders
RRP: £10.99
Price: £11.75

Review The Naked And The Dead [1958] / Odyssey Video:


Review 4 Front Video / 55 Days At Peking [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • David Niven
  • John Ireland
  • Flora Robson
  • Andrew Marton
  • Nicholas Ray
  • Charlton Heston
  • Guy Green
  • Ava Gardner
Release date: 1997-04-14
Run time: 147 min.
Creator: Robert Hamer
RRP: £5.99
Price: £9.49

Review 55 Days At Peking [1963] / 4 Front Video:


Review MGM Entertainment / The Sweet Smell Of Success [1957]
Actors & Directors
  • Alexander Mackendrick
  • Martin Milner
  • Jeff Donnell
  • Susan Harrison
  • Burt Lancaster
  • Tony Curtis
Release date: 2000-04-10
Run time: 92 min.
Creator: Ernest Lehman
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.89

Review The Sweet Smell Of Success [1957] / MGM Entertainment:

A classic of the late 1950s, Sweet Smell of Success looks at the string-pulling behind-the-scenes action between desperate press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) and the ultimate power broker in that long-ago show-biz Manhattan: gossip columnist JJ Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster). Written by Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets (who based the Hunsecker character on the similarly brutal and power-mad Walter Winchell), the film follows Falco's attempts to promote a client through Hunsecker's column-until he is forced to make a deal with the devil and help Hunsecker ruin a jazz musician who has the nerve to date Hunsecker's sister. Director Alexander MacKendrick and cinematographer James Wong Howe, shooting on location mostly at night, capture this New York demimonde in silky black and white, in which neon and shadows share a scarily symbiotic relationship-a near-match for the poisonous give-and-take between the edgy Curtis and the dismissive Lancaster. -Marshall Fine.

Review 2 Entertain Video / Doctor Who The Android Invasion [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • Tom Baker
  • Ian Marter
  • Elizabeth Sladen
Release date: 1995-03-06
Run time: 96 min.
Price: £11.99

Review Doctor Who The Android Invasion [1963] / 2 Entertain Video:


Browse Drama:

Models & Brands:
The Longest Day [1962], Othello [1955], While The City Sleeps [1956], Ice Cold In Alex [1958], Hunted [1952], Scorsese x 4 [1963], Richard III [1955], Inspector Calls, An / Folly To Be Wise [1953], The Quare Fellow [1962], Too Late The Hero [1969], Doctor Who The Ark in Space [1963], Rembrandt [1936], Belle De Jour (1967), The Fortune Cookie [1967], The Pickwick Papers [1952], Secret Beyond The Door [1948], The Naked And The Dead [1958], 55 Days At Peking [1963], The Sweet Smell Of Success [1957], Doctor Who The Android Invasion [1963]

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