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Review Second Sight Films Ltd. / The Day Of The Triffids [1962]
Actors & Directors
  • Mervyn Johns
  • Howard Keel
  • Freddie Francis
  • Kieron Moore
  • Steve Sekely
  • Nicole Maurey
  • Janette Scott
Release date: 1997-04-07
Run time: 94 min.
Price: £12.99

Review The Day Of The Triffids [1962] / Second Sight Films Ltd.:


Review Nouveaux Pictures / La Jetee [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • Hélène Chatelain
  • Jacques Ledoux
  • Davos Hanich
  • Chris Marker
  • André Heinrich
  • Jean Négroni
Release date: 1997-10-13
Run time: 26 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £18.20

Review La Jetee [1966] / Nouveaux Pictures:

A man from a post-apocalyptic future is chosen to return to the past in order help save humanity because he's haunted by a vivid memory from his childhood of a murder at an airport. If that sounds familiar, you've either already seen Chris Marker's exquisite "photo-roman" or Terry Gilliam's loose remake of it, (Twelve Monkeys. ) Good as Gilliam's film is, it's no substitute for La Jetée, which is the sort of cinematic experimental oddity that wraps around the imagination like a vine and, once seen, can never be forgotten. A mere 25 minutes long, the "film"-really a series of still photographs run together apart from one startling moment of movement-begins in Paris before a vaguely described war drives humanity underground "to rule over a kingdom of rats". Sent back in time to the present (or rather to the film's 1962 present) by nothing more high-tech than an injection, the hero (Davos Hanich) finds the woman (Hél&eagrave;ne Chatelain) whose face he's remembered all his life since a murder at Paris' Orly airport. They grab a modest measure of happiness in their romance, conducted around Paris' museums and public gardens. A sly allusion to Hitchcock's Vertigo underlines the film's key theme: the near-mystical power of memory and the way an image can form the basis of an obsession, hence the film's use of ominous black-and-white stills, like scraps from disorganised family album. Muted and melancholy, La Jetée also sports one of the all-time great cinematic twists. -Leslie Felperin.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Star Trek Voyager - Vol. 4.6 (Concerning Flight/Mortal Coil) [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • Jesus Trevino
  • Roxann Dawson
  • Robert Beltran
  • Ethan Phillips
  • Allan Kroeker
  • Kate Mulgrew
  • Robert Picardo
Release date: 1998-06-15
Run time: 88 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £9.99

Review Star Trek Voyager - Vol. 4.6 (Concerning Flight/Mortal Coil) [1996] / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Doctor Who - Ghost Light [1989]
Actors & Directors
  • Sylvester McCoy
  • Alan Wareing
Release date: 1994-05-03
Run time: 73 min.
RRP: £11.99
Price: £4.70

Review Doctor Who - Ghost Light [1989] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Warner Home Video / Doctor Who And The Daleks [1965]
Actors & Directors
  • Gordon Flemyng
  • Peter Cushing
  • Roberta Tovey
  • Roy Castle
  • Jennie Linden
Release date: 1996-02-26
Run time: 79 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.50

Review Doctor Who And The Daleks [1965] / Warner Home Video:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Star Trek Voyager - Vol. 3.12 (Distant Origin/Displaced) [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • Ethan Phillips
  • David Livingston
  • Allan Kroeker
  • Kate Mulgrew
  • Robert Beltran
  • Jennifer Lien
  • Roxann Dawson
Release date: 1997-09-29
Run time: 88 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £4.35

Review Star Trek Voyager - Vol. 3.12 (Distant Origin/Displaced) [1996] / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Review Manga Entertainment / Wings Of Honneamise [1989]
Actors & Directors
  • Tom Fahn
  • Rob Matthews (II)
  • Lena Gale
  • Steve Bulen
  • Hiroyuki Yamaga
  • Stanley Gurd Jr.
Release date: 1995-02-06
Run time: 125 min.
Price: £5.99

Review Wings Of Honneamise [1989] / Manga Entertainment:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / The X Files : Season One Box Set [1994]
Actors & Directors
  • David Duchovny
  • Gillian Anderson
Release date: 2000-06-19
RRP: £79.99
Price: £8.94

Review The X Files : Season One Box Set [1994] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

Back in 1993, the fledgling US network Fox thought its breakout hit series would be The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr, a wild Western that barely lasted a season. They expected little of this odd show they commissioned from producer-writer Chris Carter, whose track record was mainly in surfing magazines and teen programmes. Too many series (Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Project UFO, Shadow Chasers) had been down the parapsychology/alien visitation route without making television history, and teaming a leading man (David Duchovny) who was fresh from wearing a dress in Twin Peaks and the cable erotica series Red Shoe Diaries with a female co-star with nothing at all on her curriculum vitae more or less guaranteed fast cancellation. Yet The X Files clicked and has grown into a major franchise, expanding into movies, books, t-shirts, comics and alien mugs. The foundation of the X-industry is in this box set, which collects all 24 episodes of the first season, as the show, its creators and stars were finding their feet. Watching them all at once, you can see Gillian Anderson go from stiff to subtle without breaking character, and notice how the Dragnet-style emotionless patter of the early episodes unbends to allow for a streak of black humour that has become one of the show's great strengths. The episodes themselves are hit and miss. The first couple of shows ("The X Files", "Deep Throat") and many later episodes ("Conduit", "Space", "Fallen Angel", "E. B. E. [+]
" and series finale "The Erlenmeyer Flask") introduce and develop the so-called "mythology" thread as FBI agent Fox Mulder (Duchovny) probes a series of UFO or alien-encounter stories to assuage his guilt over the disappearance of his sister long ago. Meanwhile, sinister forces within the government try to stop him and prevent any revelations as to what exactly is going on from breaking (a thread that would, in later seasons, stretch and break). The episode that really sold the series was the third, "Squeeze", in which Mulder and his sceptical partner Dana Scully (Anderson) tangle with a mutant (Doug Hutchison, the evil guard of The Green Mile) who can elongate himself and eat human livers. A bizarre, creepy, gruesome and slyly amusing show, this kicks off a run of episodes ("Shadows", "Fire", "Miracle Man", "Shapes", "Roland" and the "Squeeze" sequel "Tooms") featuring mutants, ghosts, psychic happenings, grisly murders (Anderson gets to do all the autopsies) and plots which sometimes have resolutions. Other standout episodes include: "Ice", a miniature of The Thing with alien bugs in the arctic taking over a research station; "Eve", an evil child/cloning story; and "Beyond the Sea", an unusually emotional ghost tale which finally allowed Anderson as much anguish as Duchovny. There are dropped balls ("Genderbender", "Lazarus", "Young at Heart") where repetition has already set in, or too much conventional cop-action stuff gets in the way. The simmering sexual chemistry of Mulder and Scully only surfaces in a few moments as the characters and the players settle into their game, and the supporting cast (Mitch Pileggi as the FBI superior, William B. Davis as the ever-smoking master villain) have yet to come into their own, but X-philes will need this on their shelves between their bottled alien baby and Anderson-in-lingerie calendar. -Kim Newman.

Review Contender Entertainment Group / Farscape - Season 2 [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Geoff Bennett (II)
  • Ian Watson (II)
  • Tony Tilse
Release date: 2001-10-15
Run time: 990 min.
Price: £69.99

Review Farscape - Season 2 [1999] / Contender Entertainment Group:

The second season of Farscape expands upon and develops the characters introduced in the ambitious first season. John Crichton's new nemesis is the deadly Scorpius, replacing Crais who has taken the living ship Moya's offspring on a voyage into the unknown. Moya's regular crew-Aeryn, Zhaan, Chiana, D'Argo and Rygel-remain as divided and suspicious of each other as ever, yet somehow manage to pull together at times of crisis. The writers continue to exploit the show's gift for surprising as well as emotionally convincing character development, while the CGI effects, prosthetics and state-of-the-art puppetry-courtesy of Jim Henson's Creature Shop-continue to make Farscape the most original-looking sci-fi show on TV. The witty scripts, peppered with post-modern pop-culture references and movie in-jokes, are also a breath of fresh air. The result is episodic TV sci-fi that continually pushes at the accepted boundaries of the genre. -Mark Walker.

Review 4 Front Video / Godzilla Ebirah Horror Of The Deep
Actors & Directors
  • Jun Fukuda
Release date: 1998-06-15
Run time: 87 min.
Price: £5.99

Review Godzilla Ebirah Horror Of The Deep / 4 Front Video:


Review Second Sight Films Ltd. / The Day Of The Triffids [1962]
Actors & Directors
  • Kieron Moore
  • Nicole Maurey
  • Steve Sekely
  • Howard Keel
  • Mervyn Johns
  • Janette Scott
  • Freddie Francis
Release date: 1997-11-10
Run time: 94 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £5.95

Review The Day Of The Triffids [1962] / Second Sight Films Ltd.:


Review Warner Home Video / Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • Roberta Tovey
  • Bernard Cribbins
  • Peter Cushing
  • Gordon Flemyng
  • Ray Brooks (II)
  • Andrew Keir
Release date: 1996-05-13
Run time: 81 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £5.99

Review Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. [1966] / Warner Home Video:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Star Trek : The Original Series - Vol. 1.1 - The Cage / Where No Man Has Gone Before / The Corbomite Manoeuver [1969]
Actors & Directors
  • James Goldstone
  • Gary Lockwood
  • George Takei
  • William Shatner
  • Sally Kellerman
  • Leonard Nimoy
Release date: 1996-06-24
Run time: 160 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £14.99

Review Star Trek : The Original Series - Vol. 1.1 - The Cage / Where No Man Has Gone Before / The Corbomite Manoeuver [1969] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

Made in 1964, the original pilot episode of Star Trek, "The Cage", was rejected by NBC executives because it was just "too cerebral": with well-developed characters, groundbreaking (for the time) special effects and a screen play that spoke eloquently of its creator's compassionate, liberal humanism, science fiction of this quality had simply never been seen on the small screen before. Jeffrey Hunter's stoical Captain Pike is at the helm of the Starship Enterprise, Leonard Nimoy's Spock has the ears but not the familiar reserved demeanour; and Majel Barrett's Number One is a remarkably frosty female lead. The "cerebral" story is reminiscent of Forbidden Planet, as a group of super-intelligent aliens manipulate Pike for their own mysterious ends. But instead of simply dropping Gene Roddenberry's ambitious idea, in an unprecedented move the network requested he make a second pilot. Jeffrey Hunter stepped down from the captain's chair in favour of William Shatner for "Where No Man Has Gone Before" in 1966 and, well, everyone knows the rest. "The Cage" did not quite disappear, however, as it was cannily recycled in the two-part episode "The Menagerie". This is where it all began. -Mark Walker.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Star Trek Data
Release date: 1995-11-06
RRP: £34.99
Price: £18.99

Review Star Trek Data / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Star Trek : Deep Space Nine - Vol. 10 - Duet / In The Hands Of The Prophets [1995]
Actors & Directors
  • Rene Auberjonois
  • Colm Meaney
  • Avery Brooks
  • James L. Conway
  • Nana Visitor
  • David Livingston
  • Terry Farrell
Release date: 1994-01-10
Run time: 87 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £1.92

Review Star Trek : Deep Space Nine - Vol. 10 - Duet / In The Hands Of The Prophets [1995] / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Review Uca Catalogue / Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within [2001]
Actors & Directors
  • Moto Sakakibara
  • Hironobu Sakaguchi
  • Alec Baldwin
  • Peri Gilpin
  • Steve Buscemi
  • Ming-Na
  • Ving Rhames
Release date: 2003-09-08
Run time: 101 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £2.75

Review Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within [2001] / Uca Catalogue:

Inspired by the popular video game franchise, Hironobu Sakaguchi's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a completely computer-generated film which, unlike Toy Story and Shrek, is also a serious science fiction drama with astonishingly human digital actors. Aki, the female lead, appeared in a full-page spread in Maxim magazine's Hot 100 list-and was indistinguishable from the real-life models. The setting and conflict make for incredible action, but it's the larger issues, character interaction and human elements that really make the movie shine. The Spirits Within is not simply a science fiction movie, in the same way that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is not simply a kung-fu flick. The result is a fantastic summer movie with better action and more emotion than Pearl Harbor and actors more lifelike than those in that other video game movie, Tomb Raider. -Mike Fehlauer, Amazon. com On the DVD: disc one includes an interesting, if a little flat, director's commentary. Better is the isolated score with a superb and fascinating commentary from composer Elliot Goldenthal. Other options allow you to access more information about the film. The menus are clear and feature full CGI effects and specially created sequences. [+]
Disc two is where you will find the real meat, with literally hours of documentaries and technical promos to plough through covering every aspect of the filmmaking process, along with music videos and an alternative opening sequence. You can re-edit a short sequence from the film and there's also a wealth of DVD-ROM material offering the complete screenplay and an interesting tour of Square Pictures, makers of the film. Features like the FHM-style photo shoot of CGI heroine Aki give an indication of the target audience for this movie. Add all this extra material to the superb picture quality-which almost leaves you convinced that you are watching a live action movie-and crystal sharp sound and you have one of the most technically impressive discs to hit the market so far. Any DVD buff will need this just to prove that the format is a worthwhile investment. -Jon Weir.

Review Warner Home Video / Alphaville (1965)
Actors & Directors
  • Jean-Luc Godard
  • Jean-Louis Comolli
  • Eddie Constantine
  • László Szabó
  • Anna Karina
  • Akim Tamiroff
Release date: 2000-05-15
Run time: 95 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £19.97

Review Alphaville (1965) / Warner Home Video:

As the French New Wave was reaching its maturity and film going had evolved as a favourite pastime of intellectuals and urban sophisticates, along came Jean-Luc Godard to shake up every convention and send highfalutin critics scrambling to their typewriters. 1965's Alphaville is a perfect example of Godard's willingness to disrupt expectation, combine genres, and comment on movies while making socio-political statements that inspired doctoral theses and left a majority of viewers mystified. Part science fiction and part hard-boiled detective yarn, Alphaville presents a futuristic scenario using the most modern and impersonal architecture that Godard could find in mid-60s Paris. A haggard private eye (Eddie Constantine) is sent to an ultramodern city run by a master computer, where his mission is to locate and rescue a scientist who is trapped there. As the story unfolds on Godard's strictly low-budget terms, the movie tackles a variety of topics such as the dehumanising effect of technology, wilful suppression of personality, saturation of commercial products, and, of course, the constant recollection of previous films through Godard's carefully chosen images. For most people Alphaville, like many of the director's films, will prove utterly baffling. For those inclined to dig deeper into Godard's artistic intentions, the words of critic Andrew Sarris will ring true: "To understand and appreciate Alphaville is to understand Godard, and vice versa. " -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Actors & Directors
  • Jon Pertwee
  • ELizabeth Sladen
  • Alan Bromly
Run time: 91 min.
Price: £10.99

Review Doctor Who - The Time Warrior [1973] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Borg Box [1990]
Actors & Directors
  • Rob Bowman
  • LeVar Burton
  • Michael Dorn
  • Brent Spiner
  • Alexander Singer
  • Patrick Stewart
  • Cliff Bole
  • Jonathan Frakes
  • Robert Lederman
Release date: 1994-12-05
Run time: 264 min.
Price: £24.99

Review Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Borg Box [1990] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

It's a tad ironic that Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced the best baddies in TV sci-fi since the Daleks, as the show originally championed the optimistic hope that civilisations of the future could always work things out by talking through their problems. Thankfully, the Borg are different: "You can't outrun them, you can't destroy them. They are relentless," says the mischievous Q to Captain Picard shortly after introducing the Enterprise's crew to its new nemesis. No opportunity here for Counselor Troi to try the touchy-feely approach. The Borg are a semi-humanoid race of cyborgs who live in an ant colony-like collective dedicated to "assimilating" all new species in order to acquire their skills and unique attributes. They first appear in the episode "Q-who?": in a fit of pique brought on by boredom, Q (the estimable John deLancie) drags the Enterprise 7,000 light years from known space to demonstrate to Picard that the gung-ho Captain really has no idea what is actually "out there". Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) knows all too much about the Borg already, and warns Picard prophetically that they will be back. Things really hot up in the two-parter "The Best of Both Worlds"-one of Star Trek's all-time best stories-in which the Borg mount a devastating full-scale assault on the Federation and shockingly assimilate Picard, transforming him into their mouthpiece (in a nice classical touch he's now called Locutus). Only some nifty counter-intuitive manoeuvring by Riker saves the day. Then in "I, Borg" the sentimentality that plagued NextGen from time to time threatens to undermine the Borg as the ultimate implacable villains: a young Borg is captured by the Enterprise and taught to become an individual, against Picard's initial hostile instincts. [+]
This has repercussions in another two-parter, "Descent", in which we see the Borg split into two factions: it transpires that Data's renegade twin brother android Lore is manipulating them. All these episodes are collected in an impressive-looking Borg cube package, although one has to exercise great care in removing the tapes from the packaging without damaging it. If all this still isn't enough, everyone's favourite evil cyborgs returned as dastardly as ever in the movie First Contact. -Mark Walker.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Ladyhawke [1985]
Actors & Directors
  • Rutger Hauer
  • John Wood
  • Leo McKern
  • Michelle Pfeiffer
  • Richard Donner
  • Matthew Broderick
Release date: 1990-07-05
Run time: 118 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £0.99

Review Ladyhawke [1985] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

This lushly produced fantasy has gained a loyal following since its release in 1985, and it gave a welcome boost to the careers of Matthew Broderick, Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer. You have to ignore the overly aggressive music score by Andrew Powell, music director of the Alan Parsons Project (critic Pauline Kael aptly dubbed it "disco-medieval") and director Richard Donner's reckless allowance of anachronistic dialogue and uninspired storytelling, but there's a certain charm to the movie's combination of romance and heroism. Broderick plays a young thief who comes to the aid of tragic lovers Isabeau (Pfeiffer), who is cursed to become a hawk every day at sunrise and Navarre (Hauer) who turns into a wolf at sunset. The curse was cast by an evil sorcerer-bishop (John Wood), and as Broderick eludes the bishop's henchmen, Navarre struggles to conquer the villain, lift the curse and be reunited with his love in human form. The tragedy of this lovers' dilemma keeps the movie going, and Broderick is well cast as a young, medieval variation of Woody Allen. -Jeff Shannon.

Models & Brands:
The Day Of The Triffids [1962], La Jetee [1966], Star Trek Voyager - Vol. 4.6 (Concerning Flight/Mortal Coil) [1996], Doctor Who - Ghost Light [1989], Doctor Who And The Daleks [1965], Star Trek Voyager - Vol. 3.12 (Distant Origin/Displaced) [1996], Wings Of Honneamise [1989], The X Files : Season One Box Set [1994], Farscape - Season 2 [1999], Godzilla Ebirah Horror Of The Deep, The Day Of The Triffids [1962], Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. [1966], Star Trek : The Original Series - Vol. 1.1 - The Cage / Where No Man Has Gone Before / The Corbomite Manoeuver [1969], Star Trek Data, Star Trek : Deep Space Nine - Vol. 10 - Duet / In The Hands Of The Prophets [1995], Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within [2001], Alphaville (1965), Doctor Who - The Time Warrior [1973], Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Borg Box [1990], Ladyhawke [1985]

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