Hard to imagine now but long before Richard Attenborough became Lord Dickie, benevolent patriarch of British moviedom, he specialised in playing weaselly little thugs and punks. Brighton Rock, adapted from Graham Greene’s classic novel, offered him one of his best early roles as Pinkie, juvenile leader of a seedy gang of racetrack crooks in the Sussex seaside town. When it seems an innocent young waitress may know too much about one of their killings, Pinkie decides to keep her quiet by marrying her. But in Greene’s world of guilt-ridden Catholicism and inexorable doom, it was never going to be that easy.

Is the famous twist ending a cop-out? That depends just how much irony you read into it. But the Brighton atmosphere, all tawdry gaiety shot through with a crackling undercurrent of fear, is so vivid you can smell it. Made with a cool, dispassionate eye by the Boulting Brothers (before they turned jokey with the likes of I’m Alright Jack, for instance) and superbly shot by Harry Waxman, this is one of Britain’s few great contributions to the noir thriller cycle. Young Dickie, twitchy, vicious and terrified, is a revelation–and don’t miss William Hartnell, the original Dr Who, as his cynical sidekick. –Philip Kemp Rightly regarded as a genuine classic of British cinema, Brighton Rock has stood the test of time remarkably well to emerge as a tense, original thriller. Although there is much that is old-fashioned here (particularly the less than convincing East End accents), the tale of feuding gangster factions holds up favourably compared to modern-day efforts. In place of the now all-too-familiar violence is a quiet, brooding menace with much of the black and white film shot in the dark shadows of the underworld. Richard Attenborough holds it all together with his remarkable portrayal of young gangster Pinkie, exuding a threatening aura while often saying very little. Not surprisingly, given its base in Graham Greene’s famous novel, the film has an exceptionally strong storyline that is matched by the directions and performances. A good lesson in timeless film making.

On the DVD: Brighton Rock on disc sadly is a package with nothing to offer over the standard video release. The black and white footage shows little sign of remastering, nor does the soundtrack. There are no extras whatsoever—this is surely a massive oversight given the classic nature of the film itself. –Phil Udell

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Product Description
You’re a natural born killer and there’s no escaping that awful biological truth. Your ancestors spent most of their time hunting mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers before dragging them back to a grateful Raquel Welch at the back of her cave. Now you can live-out myriad caveman fantasies by bringing death and destruction to poor Stan on a daily basis. And he, in return, will save your desk from becoming stained with coffee rings. And that sounds tikkety-boo to us. Those delightfully-named chaps at Suck UK have been innovating again. And this time they have pioneered the world’s first silicone rubber road-kill-cum-stain-stopper. It’s a visually impactful sight to see Stan for the first time. Fully thermoplastic and looking not unlike the late lamented Morph, Stan appears to have suffered death by crushing under a heavy falling object. But not from an anvil or grand piano. From your humble tea or coffee mug. Gosh. It’s an insult to call him merely a drinks coaster. For it is nothing short of his destiny to hold your mug rock steady on the desktop and absorb all manner of stains, which is why he’s fully washable to boot. We promise you’ll never look at a splatted roadside hedgehog in the same way again.

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Amazon.co.uk Review
Available “fully uncut” for the first time in the UK, Two Thousand Maniacs! is the second of director HG Lewis’ “blood” trilogy. Though the “once-in-a-lifetime” title makes a promise no film could keep–only about 30 maniacs show up–and the level of gore is a notch or so down from Blood Feast–only four deaths–this is perhaps the director’s most watchable film. The Brigadoon-derived plot nugget concerns a Deep South town (variously suggested to be in Georgia or Arkansas, but actually Florida) wiped out by Union raiders during the Civil War, which reappears once every 100 years to wreak “blood vengeance”. For the centennial celebrations, Pleasant Valley lures Yankee tourists off the road and subjects them to gruesome fairground games–a cannibal BBQ, a “horse-race”, a “barrel roll” and “teetering rock”. The ideas are nasty, and Lewis even attempts subtlety by keeping the quartering and the spiked barrel inside mostly off screen, but the creepiest touch is the “aw-shucks” good humour with which the ghostly Confederate maniacs–led by a mayor who is the spitting image of Sergeant Bilko’s Colonel Hall–treat their horrible sport. It has the usual Lewis drawbacks–mostly inept staging, acting that veers between the wooden (“Playmate” Connie Mason) and the amateurishly hammy (one of the worst child actors in film history), clumsy editing, community theatre production values–but his fans wouldn’t have it any other way and the hayseed music is great!

On the DVD: The full-screen image is as good as this ever will look, considering Lewis’ primitive understanding of lighting cinematography, with rich scarlet blood, vividly ugly 1963 leisurewear and very few print imperfections. The features offer an imaginative “Welcome to Pleasant Valley Centennial” menu, with buttons like the target you have to hit to drop the “teetering rock” on the Yankee; lurid original trailer (“Two thousand maniacs crazed for carnage started bathing a whole town in pulsing, human blood … brutal, evil, ghastly beyond belief”); filmographies for Lewis, Friedman and star William Kerwin (aka Thomas Wood); promotional art gallery; notes by aptly-monickered expert Billy Chainsaw, highlighting the connections with John Waters and Brigadoon; a teaser trailer for “the Herschell Gordon Lewis Collection”; a mass of trailers for other “Tartan terror” titles. The Lewis-Friedman commentary and mind-numbing outtakes reel available on the Region 1 DVD are sadly absent, but that release doesn’t have this one’s major bonus addition–the entire soundtrack album, with compositions by Lewis himself (including the immortal “Yee-Hah, the South’s Gonna Rise Again”) and Flatt and Scruggs (of Bonnie and Clyde fame). –Kim Newman

Two Thousand Maniacs

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Product Description
The Boom Dock is no lightweight dock, this is a serious box of power…. It lurks on your shelf, teasing you, tempting you with its empty iPod/iPhone dock; “plug it in!” It goads…. You oblige, turn it up to 60 and BOOM! You would be forgiven for wondering if it is nuclear powered. It is not brute force though, it delivers sound to you with military precision. We have used revolutionary aluminium cones for the satellite drivers which give a massive dynamic range close to 90dB. For the non geeks out there (most of you!) good comparisons are; CDs which have a maximum range of 96dB (which is rarely used) and the vinyl rock and pop albums from the 60’s and 70’s which only had about 30dB!

The Boom Dock is a 2.1 system, it has a low Q down-firing 5.25″ subwoofer which gives a super-sharp, super deep and super punchy bass response that you can feel right in your chest. It is like being at the epicentre of a small earthquake. If this is too much for you though, you have the option of adjusting the bass and treble levels to suit your own preferences.

At the back, you will find a rare sighting for this day in age – a pair of proper phono inputs! You can connect other audio visual equipment to the Boom Dock, including your TV (as long as it has an audio output). The magnets are shielded so you can site it very close to screens without damaging them.

You can tune the Boom Dock into regular FM or AM radio stations and enjoy them with the full sound that it produces.

Trouble waking up in the morning? Simply select a rousing tune on your iPod, crank the volume to max and set the alarm on the Boom Dock for your regular wake up time…. BOOM! try and sleep though it, we dare you!

The Boom Dock will accept any iPod (except shuffle) and your iPhone/3G/3GS (in flight mode).

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Amazon.co.uk Review
Thanks to Mike Myers’ wonderfully rude, lowbrow humour and his full-bodied understanding of who his character is, Wayne’s World proved to be that rare thing: a successful transition of a Saturday Night Live sketch to the big screen. Wayne Campbell (Myers) and his nerdy pal Garth (Dana Carvey) are teens who live at home and have their own low-rent cable-access show in Aurora, Illinios, in which they celebrate their favourite female film stars and heavy-metal bands. When a Chicago TV station smells a potential youth-audience ratings hit, the station’s weasely executive (Rob Lowe) tries to co-opt the show–and steal Wayne’s new rock ‘n’ roll girlfriend (Tia Carrere) at the same time. Like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure before it (and the later Detroit Rock City), this is a film that affectionately parodies and celebrates slacker teenage culture. It’s also filled with all kinds of knowing spoofs of film conventions, from Wayne talking to the camera (while forbidding other characters to do so) and hilariously self-conscious product placements, to labelling a moment a “Gratuitous Sex Scene”. Dumb yet clever–and very funny. –Marshall Fine, Amazon.com

Wayne’s World

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Rock ‘N’ Roll High School

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• 30W total speaker output from two 3″ drivers
• Built-in FM radio with 10 programmable preset stations
• 7 preset EQ settings:Off, Jazz, Pop, Rock, Flat, Classic, Bass, Acoustic bass channel
• Easy iPod play – plug your iPod in and it plays automatically
• Fabric grill
• Backlit buttons
• Hidden LED display
• Hidden cable compartment

GEAR4 HouseParty 4

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RED Rock RR670 PC headset with Microphone for Skype and MSN chatting

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Amazon.co.uk Review
The comedic genius of This Is Spinal Tap is confirmed by the fact that a majority of studio executives were utterly clueless about its brilliance. As a first-time director and cowriter, Rob Reiner must have felt simultaneously frustrated and elated, knowing that the obtuseness of movie executives was a clue to his debut project’s potential greatness. Now, of course, the clarity of hindsight and the rarity of superior satire have turned This Is Spinal Tap into one of the funniest documentary spoofs of all time. Reiner and the members of “Tap” (Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer) couldn’t have picked a better target for their satire, because heavy metal music in the early 1980s was already a borderline case of self-parody. From the bizarre, premature deaths of the band’s drummers to the backstage squabbles over sexist cover art and meddling groupies, this movie scores about a hundred comedic bull’s-eyes for lampooning every possible aspect of rock pomposity in the age of Kiss. It’s a virtual bible of rock & roll irreverence, so accurate in its observations that it’s become a tour-bus classic for real bands around the world. On the one-to-ten scale of satirical inspiration, This Is Spinal Tap is like the modified amplifiers that Christopher Guest so hilariously demonstrates: this one goes to 11. –Jeff Shannon

This Is Spinal Tap

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