Comrades
A film by Bill Douglas
With Robin Soans, Imelda Staunton, Philip Davis,
Vanessa Redgrave, Robert Stephens, James Fox, Michael Horden, Freddie Jones, Barbara Windsor, Murray Melvin, Michael Clarke and Keith Allen

The epic story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, six Dorset labourers deported to Australia in the 1830s for forming a trade union

Unfolding in the pastoral haze of Dorset and the blinding light of Australia, this is a beautiful film, rich with carefully layered visual illusions and nuances. With moving, profound performances throughout, Comrades – a compelling account of struggle and injustice – is also a tale of history, storytelling and the way we see our world. 2009 marks the 175th anniversary of the London demonstrations which were instrumental in securing the Martyrs’ pardon and return.

This distinctive feature from Bill Douglas, a director of singular vision – better known for his autobiographical Trilogy than for this extraordinary epic – is presented in a new High-Definition restoration and is available for the first time ever on DVD and Blu-ray in a 2-disc set with over 2 hours of special features.

The release coincides with the BFI’s Blu-ray release of the Bill Douglas Trilogy (My Childhood (1972), My Ain Folk (1973), My Way Home (1978)) on the same day.

Special features on Disc 2
• Lanterna Magicka – Bill Douglas & the Secret History of Cinema (2009, 60 mins), an insightful new documentary on Douglas’s life and work
• Visions of: Comrades (2009, 15 mins), cast-members recall making the film
• Bill Douglas interviews (1978, 33 mins), exclusive presentation of a remarkable interview in which Douglas discusses his method and creating approach to writing and directing
• Home and Away (Michael Alexander, 1974, 30 mins), charming short film co-scripted by Douglas
• Original Comrades trailer
• On-set report from the set of Comrades
• Illustrated booklet with essays, production material and credits

Release date: 27 July 2009
RRP: DVD £22.99 / cat. no. BFIVD820 / Blu-ray £27.99 / cat. no. BFIB1012
UK / 1987 / colour / English with optional English hard-of-hearing, French, Spanish and German subtitles; special features have English hard-of-hearing subtitles / DVD: 175 mins / BD: 182 mins / cert 18
DVD: aspect ratio 1.78:1 / BD: original aspect ratio 1.66:1

Penny Points to Paradise • Let’s Go Crazy

Peter Sellers • Spike Milligan • Harry Secombe

New strand The Adelphi Collection launches with world premiere DVD and Blu-ray release of Penny Points to Paradise and Let’s Go Crazy newly restored by the BFI National Archive.

On 3 August, the BFI brings the ultra-rare British comedies featuring early Peter Sellers performances Penny Points to Paradise and Let’s Go Crazy to DVD and Blu-ray, in a special edition which includes the little-seen Sellers voiced comic clip collection The Slappiest Days of Our Lives. Penny Points to Paradise and Let’s Go Crazy can also be seen on the big screen on 27 July when they will be shown at a special event at BFI Southbank.

Featuring celebrated cast members from The Goon Show, and shot on a shoestring budget, these post-war comedies have remained virtually unseen since their original release. Now rescued from obscurity, and painstakingly reconstructed and restored from the best available materials by the BFI National Archive, this eagerly anticipated release constitutes the missing link in British comedy history and charts the very beginnings of Peter Sellers’ extraordinary rise to international stardom.

Penny Points to Paradise and Let’s Go Crazy are the first titles in a new BFI DVD strand exploring the output of Adelphi Films – a small, family-run British company. Future titles will explore the exciting, yet curiously overlooked, output of this tiny studio, from noir-ish crime pictures and buoyant musicals to colourful melodramas and slapstick comedies. Sid James, Diana Dors, Ted Ray, Petula Clark, Ronnie Corbett, Rolf Harris and Prunella Scales are just some of the many well-loved performers who appeared before Adelphi’s cameras early on in their careers.

Penny Points to Paradise and Let’s Go Crazy have been restored by the BFI National Archive thanks to the generous support of Laura Camuti, a Sellers aficionado. Both films have been re-mastered to High Definition from the BFI’s newly restored film elements.

Vic Pratt, Curator, BFI National Archive comments: ‘This release will be welcomed by film scholars, radio enthusiasts, and everybody who enjoys good, old-fashioned British comedy. These new restorations provide a fascinating – and immensely historically valuable – opportunity to see Sellers, Milligan and Secombe, captured on film at a point just before they found fame as The Goons, developing and honing their craft before your very eyes.’

Penny Points to Paradise (Tony Young, 1951, 68 mins)

Gormless Pools winner Harry Flakers (Harry Secombe), accompanied by his best pal, Spike (Milligan), head off on holiday down beside the seaside where he hopes to relax and celebrate his new-found riches. Before long, they are confronted by gold-digging gals, dealing with the Goonish Major (Sellers), facing a sassy salesman who won’t take no for an answer (Sellers, again), hula-hula-ing with Felix Mendelssohn and his Hawaiian Serenaders, and tangling with thieves (dryly played by Alfred Marks, and Bill Kerr of Hancock’s Half Hour). Shot on location in and around Brighton, the old-school comic antics on offer here are sure to raise a very British chuckle.

Let’s Go Crazy (Alan J. Cullimore, 1951, 31 mins)

A comedy short made immediately after Penny Points to Paradise, Let’s Go Crazy is another fascinating embryonic showcase for British comic legends Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan. This raucous, ramshackle film features improvised Goonish sketches, memorably interspersed with an entertaining selection of variety turns, including Freddy Mirfield and His Garbage Men, Britain’s outrageous answer to Spike Jones and His City Slickers.

Taking multiple roles, Sellers excels as Giuseppe, a frustrated waiter exasperated by demands for ‘boiled beef and carrots’, drags up in grande dame style to become the Crystal Jollibottom of his radio comedy days, and – as an anarchic mock-Groucho Marx – blows up the set!

Special features

• The Slappiest Days of our Lives (1953, 73 mins): Barely seen since its original release, this virtually forgotten French compilation of clips from vintage silent comedies was re-dubbed by Adelphi Films with a flight-of-fancy voiceover commentary by Peter Sellers. It is both an intriguing oddity and a valuable record of the comedian’s formative years as a character ‘voice man’. Against a backdrop of extracts from classic early comedy films, Sellers stylishly adopts the vocal personae of some of his comic heroes to take a slapstick trip across the USA.
• Illustrated booklet with essays, restoration notes and original promotional material.

Release date: 3 August 2009
DVD RRP £17.99 / cat. no. BFIVD843 / 172 mins / DVD-9
Blu-ray RRP £22.99 / cat. no. BFIB1028 / 182 mins / BD50
UK / 1951 / PG / black and white | English, optional hard-of-hearing subtitles / original aspect ratio 1.33:1

HEROSTRATUS (1967)
A film by Don Levy

When Max, a young poet (played by the iconic Michael Gothard - The Devils, The Valley (Obscured by Clouds)), hires a marketing company to turn his suicide-by-jumping into a mass-media spectacle, he finds that his subversive intentions are quickly diluted into a reactionary gesture, and his motivations are revealed as a desperate attempt to seek attention through celebrity.

Unseen since its limited release in 1967, this audacious and prescient - yet criminally overlooked - work by experimental filmmaker Don Levy left a profound mark on the landscape of late-1960s British cinema, with echoes of its visual style evident in the most celebrated work of such notable directors as Stanley Kubrick, Nicolas Roeg and Michael Winner.

Special features:
• Newly transferred to High Definition from the original negative under the supervision of Levy associate, Amnon Buchbinder
• Alternative 1.33:1 full frame presentation (Blu-ray exclusive)
• Interview with Don Levy (1973): the only known recording of Levy discussing Herostratus
• Ten Thousand Talents (1960, 24 mins): Levy's student film, set in Cambridge, featuring the voice of Peter Cook
• Time Is (1964, 29 mins): Levy's remarkable documentary
• Five Films (1967, 9 mins): Levy's hypnotic experiments in film editing techniques
• Extensive illustrated booklet with newly commissioned contributions and original documentation

1-disc DVD: DVD-9 | Aspect ratio 1.77:1 | PAL | Dolby Digital mono audio (320 kbps)
2-disc Blu-ray: BD50 + BD25 | Aspect ratios 1.77:1 + 1.33:1 | 1080 | 24fps | PCM mono audio (48k/24-bit)

UK | 1967 | colour | English, optional subtitles for the hearing-impaired | 137 minutes

ALL THE RIGHT NOISES
A film by Gerry O’Hara

Originally sold with the provocative tagline "Is 15 1/2 too young for a girl? Is one wife enough for one man?", this time-capsule of a film concerns itself with the story of a young married man who has an affair with a teenage girl, and sits as part of a peculiarly 1960s British wave of films exploring such sensitive subject matter (others included Term of Trial, Age of Consent, and Three Into Two Won't Go).

Starring Olivia Hussey, in her first post-Romeo and Juliet role, and the inimitable Tom Bell (The L-Shaped Room, Prime Suspect), this wonderful slice of British cultural history is one of only a handful of feature films directed by Gerry O'Hara, better known for his assistant-director work with such cinema giants as Tony Richardson, Carol Reed and Otto Preminger.

Special features
• Newly transferred to High Definition from original film elements
• Bernard Braden 'Now and Then' interview with Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting (1967)
• The Spy's Wife (1972, 28 mins): a rare and little-seen short film by O'Hara starring Tom Bell
• Extensive illustrated booklet featuring newly commissioned contributions from film historian Robert Murphy, Gerry O’Hara, and The Spy’s Wife producer Julian Holloway

DVD: DVD9 | Original aspect ratio 1.85:1 (16x9 anamorphic) | PAL | Dolby Digital mono audio (320 kbps)
Blu-ray: BD50 | Original aspect ratio 1.85:1 | 1080 | 24fps | PCM mono audio (48k/24-bit)

UK | 1969 | colour | English, with optional subtitles for the hearing-impaired | 87 minutes

MAN OF VIOLENCE (aka MOON) (1970)
A film by Pete Walker

In a world of gangs and villains, one man - Moon - will stop at nothing to get the girl and take the spoils. Pete Walker's affectionate low-budget homage to the gangster thriller is packed with sights and sounds from a Britain about to swing out of the Sixties and into a somewhat less optimistic decade. It offers not only rare glimpses of a world gone by, but also some unexpected twists on generic convention. The cast includes Hammer girls Luan Peters (Lust for a Vampire, Twins of Evil) and Virginia Wetherell (Doctor Jekyll & Sister Hyde, Demons of the Mind).

Presented here in a stunning new High-Definition transfer from the original negative, this release also includes Pete Walker's earlier thriller The Big Switch (aka Strip Poker).

Special features:
• Both films newly transferred to High Definition from the original negatives
• The Big Switch (aka Strip Poker) (1968, 67 mins): Pete Walker's pulp thriller which includes a climactic shoot-out in the snow on Brighton's now destroyed West Pier
• Alternative, export cut of The Big Switch (1968, 77 mins) (Blu-ray exclusive)
• Original trailers for Man of Violence and The Big Switch
• Alternative Moon title-card
• Extensive illustrated booklet featuring newly commissioned contributions from Pete Walker, novelist Cathi Unsworth, producer and critic David McGillivray, and film historian Julian Petley

DVD: DVD9 | Original aspect ratio 1.33:1 | PAL | Dolby Digital mono audio (320 kbps)
Blu-ray: BD50 | Original aspect ratio 1.33:1 | 1080 | 24fps | PCM mono audio (48k/24-bit)

UK | 1970 | colour | English, optional subtitles for the hearing-impaired | 104 minutes