New movies added to the site
Not had much chance to post here but now the site has had many major additions here is a chance to list a few of the films we have added.
Unspeakable Acts (1990) : The married couple Laurie and Joseph Braga are doctors specialized in interviewing sexual abused children. With a lot of energy they track down a pedophile who has abused many toddlers.
Dulcima (1971) : A farmer who has the reputation of drinking most of his money away, lives on farm which is in a poor state of repair. A pretty young girl, Dulcima, takes pity on him and decides to help him by cleaning the place. One of John Mills' rarest films.
Lady Caroline Lamb (1972) : A noblewoman doomed to a loveless marriage falls into a scandalous affair with the dashing Lord Byron.
No Time To Die (1958) : Daniel Thatcher is an American sergeant serving with a British tank corps in North Africa. He and most of his unit are captured by the Germans, who learn his identity as a man who once tried to assassinate Josef Goebbels, Hitler's right-hand man. Thatcher's wife was killed in the concentration camps, and now, after his failed attempt to kill the Nazi leader, Thatcher is a real prize for his captors. But Thatcher prefers not to go back to Germany as a prize, so he leads his fellow tankers in an escape attempt.
Boy On A Dolphin (1957) : Sophia Loren stars as Phaedra, a poor sponge diver on the lovely Greek isle of Hydra. While diving, she discovers an ancient brass and gold stature of a boy riding a dolphin, which is said to have the magical power to grant wishes. Her shiftless boyfriend wants to sell it to an unscrupulous art collector (Clifton Webb), but Phaedra wants to give it to anthropologist Jim Calder (Alan Ladd), who would return it to the Greek government. This film is famous for the beginning of the film when Sophia climbs onto the boat from the water and her costume leaves very little to the imagination.
Up The Junction (1968) : Movie version of the BBC TV play that first addresses some of the major social issues of the day. A girl from a rich family in Chelsea is bored and decides to go "slumming" in depressed Battersea. She gets a flat and starts working in a factory and makes some friends there. One of her friends is pregnant but abortion is illegal ...
Passport To Shame (1958) : Cabdriver Constantine falls for a French girl mixed up with the white slave ring and eventually helps to liberate her. Stars Diana Dors.
Angels One Five (1953) : 'Septic' Baird has just joined a front line RAF squadron at the height of the Battle of Britain. This is the story of "The Few" and how they managed to fight off the might of the Luftwaffe despite overwhelming German air power.
A Taste Of Evil (1971) : On her way home from a stay at a mental institution after a traumatic rape, a woman realizes that someone is deliberately trying to drive her insane. Fantastic performance by Barbara Stanwyck.
One Week To Go
This is always the busiest time of year but in particular the week before Christmas is the most hectic. As of the 23rd I am out of here for 2 weeks hard earnt sunbathing in Tenerife. There's already enough work to do this week but we always get the last minute shoppers. These are people who go online and want to order something in time for Christmas. These numbnuts need to realise if you leave it too late it jusn't isn't going to happen. We are pretty good at getting most orders out same day usually but we are still at the mercy of the post office.
I am so looking forward to this holiday. I hope everyone gets what they wanted. We have sent out thousands of
rare films in the past 2 months!
The more you earn..
..the more you owe. In business that is. I was quite surprised to see a bill for over a £1000 for last postage. But then I guess that is an indication of just how busy we have been. Thats about 80 parcels per working day leaving here. Once out the door they get slung onto the back of a Post Office van and are at their mercy. I am amazed we don't get too many complaints about breakages. It is quite painful to spend hours carefully wrapping all those parcels only to watch the postman pick up the sack and launch to the back of his van where it falls to the floor. I did mention this to him once but all though he seemed to listen I don't think it made a lot difference. So now he carefully handles our mail and then throws everyone elses mail on top of it. You can't win.
I hope everyone has a great Christmas this year. We have certainly shifted some product. I will be away for 2 weeks from the 23rd so all complaints can be handled by my partner. Woohoo!
Busy Busy Busy
Wow what a day its been. Totally non-stop. I hope this continues just a fraction after Christmas. I did manage to get some new films on the site this week. Firstly we have got "
Foxfire". Made in 1996 this stars Angelina Jolie in one of her early roles. This is a lovely film of women coming of age, going through their rites of passage as it were. There is a fairly intense scene with nudity and the film doesn't really hold true to the book (originally set in the 50's) but it is still an exceptionally good movie. One for any Jolie fan thats for sure.
"
Termini Station" is a touching story about a relationship of a mother-daughter. Of course, this is not the movie of the year but it's got a really good script and AWESOME actors and touching characters. The best thing about "Termini Station" is Follows and Dewhurst performances. I am a HUGE fan of Megan and honestly, it's the only reason I watched this film. And I really believe that Megan delivers an incredible performance. Colleen Dewhurst is also awesome in that. Anyway, this movie is funny, touching, sad, rough and very good!
Our next film added is "
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo". The amazingly detailed true story of "The Doolittle Raid" based on the novel of the same name. Stunned by Pearl Harbor and a string of defeats, America needed a victory - badly. To that end, Colonel Jimmy Dolittle, a former air racer and stunt pilot, devises a plan for a daring raid on the heart of Japan itself. To do this, he must train army bomber pilots to to something no one ever dreamed possible - launch 16 fully load bombers from an aircraft carrier! This movie is remarkable in it's accuracy and even uses film footage from the actual raid.
Yep, its a fact. Once bonfire night has passed you may as well start putting the decorations up. Things are looking up in the shop (what they are looking at I don't know). The shop has become much busier this week. A lot people are actually coming in to the shop and they already know what they want. Thats refreshing. There is nothing worse than a browser who doesn't want to spend any money. Even worse when they have a choice of about 5000 films to look through. A lot of our stock has been reduced for Christmas so if you are looking for a rare movie you might want to browse our
a-z stocklist. You will find more than just many rare films, there are hundreds of bargains in our amazon stock.
On a much more positive note I see our position in Google has become very strong. Try doing a search for "rare films" and this week we are number 1 on page 1 for about 12 million websites. How cool is that? My friend Justin can take the credit for that. (Pat yourself on the back if you are reading this J.)
Success and failure
I don't know if it's just my business or if all growing businesses go through the same stages of evolution. There does seem to be a pattern forming apart from the obvious one, where you feel like you are only in business to make everybody else richer. The pattern is that every time you add a new string to your bow, so that you get that "ready brek" feeling inside you when you turn up for work, something has to go wrong. This is a law. For every achievement you make it seems a problem has to occur. A problem that will either cost you more money that you can budget for or take up too much time so that another part of the business must suffer instead. There seems to be an interconnectivity between all parts of the business. This week for example, we had just got used to the fact we no longer have paypal (t055ers) as a simple payment solution. To get a new shopping cart we have to get an online merchant account. Which costs an astonishing £180 to get set up. If anybody out there knows of a paypal equivalent site I'd like to hear about it. As a consequence the phone has been ringing a lot more this week, which means there's less time to spend developing the website. In addition one of my dvd burners decided to stop working, at least I thought it had. It turned out to be a bit of spyware on my pc which slowed it down by just enough to cause a problem so hard to find that I bought another pc to take over the burning process. This is of course a consequence of last weeks events. If the drive hadn't failed I would still have had the spyware software on my machine that would have prevented it. The good news is I now have another pc, supplied very cheaply by a friend of mine, which has removed a lot of the worry of being on the net. Since I rebuilt my pc last week Zonealarm has told me there were 38 serious attempts to hijack my machine. Now all my machines are hiding behind a hub with built in firewall. I can't wait to see what this weeks events will throw up next week. It all seems to be going so well again I can only imagine whay lady 'bad' luck has got lined for us.
Daily perils
They say trouble comes in threes (or is it third time lucky?). This week has seen it all happen at once. We got off to a really rubbish start on Tuesday when we found our paypal account had been suspended. It turns out they think we are some kind of pirating outfit. Hopefully this has been resolved today. We still have the problem of implementing another shopping cart solution. God I hate Paypal.
I then found I had a hard drive failure and spent most of the morning putting the pc back together. Anyone who has ever put XP onto a new machine and then gone through the long process of trying to find all the software disks to reinstall everything will know just what a crap day I was having.
It was then at about 3pm I had a complete loony in the shop. I had served him before abd he'd been fine, if not a little quiet. On this occasion though he stank of beer. He then wanted to know exactly how many videos of Luton v Arsenal we had in stock. Erm none, to be exact. This was not the answer he was looking for. "How about, Arsenal v Tottenham, 1971 FA Cup Semi final". Erm nope, we didn't have that either. It was at this point he seemed to be with an invisible friend. I am still not sure if this was a person or a dog. At one point he did shake his leg as if shaking off a randy puppy. I found all this quite amusing which I think upset him a bit more. I did promise I would find him a video if he came back in 10 minutes. So fortunately he left the shop at that point. He tried to come back in but I'd locked the door, and I heard him comment "bugger now we're f**ked". He's definitely not all there. If anybody reads this from the Blackwater area be aware of a drunk about 25 with a beard and a bobble hat.
He came back yesterday. In fact he arrived at about 6am and sat on the bench in Blackwater drinking bottles of Bud. He was there until 2pm.
Most Hayley Mills fans will never have heard of this movie before. Doug McClure also stars as a man on the run who hops aboard a ship and is forced to skipper it all the way to Ireland.
This is a spoof / comedy for the Hayley Mills collectors out there. We now offer a high quality dvd conversion of this film which has apparently never seen a UK release before.
We have recently acquired this great film on dvd format. It seems this has never been released in region 2 format which is a shame because there are so many people who ask us for this. If you have an old video version, all that has been released in the uk, then why not get the dvd conversion from us?
Plot summary: Eugene is an extraordinary talent in classic guitar, but he dreams of being a famous Blues guitarist. So he investigates to find a storied lost song. He asks the legendary Blues musician Willie Brown to help him, but Willie demands to free him from the old-people's prison first and to really learn the blues on the way to it's origin: Mississippi Delta. Eugene doesn't know yet about Willie's deal with the devil, that he now wants to revoke.
Get your copy here
This was an unusually hard film to film as there appeared to be no record of it ever being released. We started searching after a request from a customer of ours who had noticed it was being screened in Australia in August. By an absolute stroke of luck the tv channel is one that did not have advert breaks and we managed to get one of our past customers to stay up to the wee hours to record it, and he did an excellent job. So he shipped over here and we have converted it onto dvd. We probably have the best copy of this rare film in the world!
When it arrived we was intrigued to see why it was rated so highly, especially after reading the review written on the Inter Movie Database by a lady who had watched it when she was a child. Some of the scenes are very dramatic, the acting is awesome in places, and if you don't own this movie you should seriously think about doing so, especially if you like war movies that are very dramatic as opposed to all-action. If you have ever seen "
Carve Her Name With Pride", you will know what we mean.
Synopsis: In wartime Italy nuns in a convent regularly smuggle Jewish children out of a nearby internment camp. The Italian army officer in charge suspects what may be going on but deliberately turns a blind eye. When the Germans take over the camp security the nuns' activities become far more dangerous.
I Know My First Name Is Steven (1989)
"I Know My First Name Is Steven" chronicles the true story of Steven Stayner's life after being kidnapped at the age of seven and held with his captor for seven years. He returns to the police station one night after rescuing another child from his captor. At first, he denies the allegations that he was sexually abused, however later during the movie it is revealed he indeed was abused during those seven years.
This really is a great movie and we have recently acquired a very good copy of it, the 3 hour long version too. For fans of true stories this is right up there with the best of them. A very popular seller on the Amazon website, this film has never seen a DVD release. Our conversion is exceptionally high quality and at a price much less than a copy on vhs.
Is it all DVD now?
In case you didn't know, Blockbuster video is now no longer anything to do with video. Up to the end of June their shops were taking in your old films and crediting your account. They would then sell the films in their shops. We found this to be quite lucrative as they thought the older a film was the less it was worth. Oh how wrong they were. We bought hundreds of films from shops all around the country in their 3 for £3 deal. From the end of July they have phased out video in their shops all together. Some shops have simply destroyed all their tapes and others have encouraged their staff to generate some cash. A couple of lads in the Surrey area have been car-booting the films and the proceeds have gone to the charity Starlight. We took all the remaining films from them and then suggested that they go to all the other shops and collect as much as they can for us. I hope this can be done before all the shops have destroyed their films. One downside is we are going to get back a lot of the dross we were floggin to them a few months back when we were thinning down!
So do you think video is dead? Blockbuster obviously just want to concentrate on new titles for rent. So what do you do if you are looking for an old film? Most of the time high street stores cannot help you because their catalogs are very incomplete and usually only show items available to order in. I get this a lot in the shop from customers who say they have looked everywhere for a rare film but in fact all they have done is to go around the town centre and ask in a few shops, or maybe checked a few charity shops. The key to finding a rare movie is to see a specialist like us. We deal with dozens of online small businesses from around the world who collect and distribute rare films.
If you think video is not dead then please support our new film forum. We want to hear to hear what you are doing with your old videos. Have you just dumped them? A lot of collectors will always keep a decent video collection simply because there are many films that have never been released on DVD. Just take a look at Amazon in the USA, there are hundreds of films on their site which haven't even been released here in the UK on video let alone dvd.
We have an excellent track record locating rare films. Some are quite tricky obviously and others are just a matter of importing from another country and converting to another format if required.
Please visit our
film forum and tell us what you think.
Hundreds of new films
The past few weeks has seen our shop take in hundreds of video tapes. Many are the same old titles but we have added hundreds of new titles, some rare, some foreign and many classic. Before I continue with todays rant I would like you to follow a link to our new forum. A topic our company is interested in is "Do you think video is dead?". Please take a couple of minutes to join our
Film Forum and post your thoughts. (Then come back!)
New films added include:
Red Dust, a classic 1932 movie starring Clarke Gable and Jean Harlow.
White Heat, the classic JamesCagney movie from 1949 - "Made it, Ma! Top of the world"
Lust For Life, the 1956 Kirk Douglas classic about Van Gogh.
This is an astounding movie purely for its representation of Bolton life in the 60's and 70's. Add to this a star studded cast and straight forward storyline and you get a good honest British movie. This is one classic which should be released on dvd because of the great demand. If anyone from Fourfront or Cinema Club are reading this then please get in touch. I will gladly inform you of dozens of titles like this which need releasing because of their popularity.
The storyline is quite simple in that it follows the lives of a typical Bolton family. The father, played by James Mason, is quite a stern chap who works hard, pays his wife her housekeeping money and expects his four children to be seated at the dinner table each evening. This fairly stable family routine falls apart when his daughter, played by Susan George, decides she no longer wants to eat herring. You have to watch it to truly appreciate the tension when the father tries to force his youngest son to swear on the bible that he didn't feed the herring to the cat. This is such a watchable film with a great 70's cast that you will recosgnise from many of the sitcoms of the era, like Rodney Bewes of Likely Lads fame, Hannah Gordon from Upstairs Downstairs, Frank Windsor of Z-Cars fame and Diane Coupland who went on to star in Bless This House with Sid James. The ending is quite moving as the family unit is reunited. A must see film.
Special effects or a great storyline ?
Do you ever ask yourself what makes a great movie? For me it is the storyline. Ok bad effects can spoil a movie but it can't ruin the plot. So many of the youth of today have probably never watched any of the great classic sci-fi movies of the 50s and 60s. Movies like the Incredible Shrinking Man were terryfying to me as a kid, and it certainly wasn't because of the effects. The problem is people today wouldn't go out of their way to watch this kind of film because they already know the effects will be poor. Take Hitchcock movies for example, you never got to see any of the violence that was implied, it was the directing, acting and compelling story which kept you gripped to your seat. These days you go to see a movie and leave saying things like "the special effects were great". So bloody what? You get great movies with great special effects and crap movies with great special effects, the recent remake of War Of The Worlds being a classic example of this. The story was ruined in my opinion. I remember the 1953 version well and to me there was no need to change the story so much. Ok, so some will argue that this is not a remake, just another adaption of the 1898 book. But to me, if this is the case, why set it in the USA. Isn't Horsell Common good enough anymore? Why introduce nuerotic kids into the story. Its true this film is about survival and not about destroying the aliens but this new movie gets quite tedious for me in the middle. Some films are truly classics and remakes or new adaptions are not necessary, but they are still interesting to watch. I won't watch the 2005 version again but it was worth the visit to the ciname. I just wonder if any producers out there have got the bottle to do a remake of Gone With The Wind or Dr. Zhivago ? Are there films that were so good they should never be remade ? I think so. Maybe the reason they won't be remade is because the only excuse at the moment to remake an old classic is to jazz it up with special effects and there is no point in doing this to any film thats non sci-fi. I think if Spielberg had stuck to the story instead of Americanising it I might have been a bit more tolerent.
This is a classic film in many ways. From the beginning you can quickly see how the people of middle-aged France had to put up with such a hypocritical system of law. Colin Firth portrays a young city lawyer who moves to the country for a simpler life but finds himself defending a pig owned by a gypsy that has been charged with the murder of a young boy. In these days animals and humans were treated equally in the eyes of the law as can be seen in the opening scene where the donkey gets a reprieve from the noose after new evidence is produced to show it was not a willing participant in the bestial affairs of a town farmer.
There are some great performances from Ian Holm and Donald Pleasance, my particular favourite is the country girl played by Sophie Dix, a pleasant buxom young lady. When she wakes the lawyer up one morning and notices he has been aroused in his dreams she promptly strips herself off and joins him in bed with the classic line "Oh well, waste not, want not eh"
Some of the courtroom scenes are quite clever. The hypocrisy is amazing. Once a judgement has been made there is no retraction, no matter what new evidence is revealed. Death seems to be the punishment for just about everything. There are many discussions about the rights and wrongs of the archaeic legal system. Well worth watching.
Hour Of The Pig (1992)
A great new addition to our website is this Barry Newman classic. Do you remember him? He starred in the classic Vanishing Point in 1971 or maybe you recall him as the lawyer in the classic 70's series Petrocelli.
It is a good movie with plenty of twists and turns and throughout it is not always obvious what some of the motivations of the charaters are. I can guarantee if you are over 40 you will have seen this film before and you will most certainly remember the ending which as a child I found quite terrifying. Of course we wouldn't want to spoil the film by telling you what it is here. The film also features a fantastic car chase sequence which lasts about 10 minutes. Notable other stars include a very attractive looking Suzy Kendall, an actress reknowned for appearances as a hostage in this kind of movie (she has that 'startled rabbit in your headlights' look). This is another one of Alistair Maclaine's great novels that successfully made it to the screen and this one certainly packs a few punches.
This is the first time we have ever come across a copy of this film in mint condition. To get your copy on dvd visit our Fear Is The Key page.
Plot summary: Following the death of his family in an aeroplane crash, a man plots an elaborate revenge scheme on those responsible. By setting himself up as a criminal, he plans to get close to a certain tycoon who has been approached by the culprits to help them retrieve the cargo of the lost plane.
Quite why this video is so sought after we really don't know but every month dozens of people from all around the world order this dvd conversion from us. Eddie is a comic genius, very funny and at times quite crude but this doesn't explain why this title is in such demand. There has never been a dvd release of this, amazingly, because it would make a small fortune, hence we offer a high quality dvd conversion for just £15 plus £1 postage (worldwide).
Synopsis: Comedian Eddie Murphy brings his proudly raunchy comedy act to a sold-out stadium and pontificates in his own vulgarly hilarious fashion on such subjects as sexual orientation, puberty, dating, disciplinarian mothers, ice cream trucks, and the personality traits of certain singers.
Visit our
Eddie Murphy Delirious page.
Midnight Lace (1960)
Today we have added this classic Doris Day movie to our collection of rare films. There has never been an official dvd release of this movie so until there is you can acquire a copy by visiting our website at
Vicpine Videos.
Plot summary:Kit and Anthony Preston never had a real honeymoon and the midnight lace pajamas are for when they can finally get out of London. Anthony's business is very pressing these days. Then Kit is frightened one day in a London fog by a voice behind a statue. Next the telephone calls start. Then there is a new man on the block, the architect of a building going up next to the Prestons' vintage apartment. That vintage building has the kind of curving stairwell and cage-type elevator that Hitchcock and other suspense masters have loved. Could Kit merely have an overactive imagination?
O'Dwyers Opinions
We are pleased to announce a recent addition to our team of film reviews. Shaun O'Dwyer is a graduate in media studies who has started his own
media blog. Sean will be reviewing many of the classic films offered by
Vicpine Videos in his own uniquely flambouyant style.
Rare films starring Hayley Mills
We have tracked down a few rare movies starring this lovely lady. The following films are recent additions to our site:
Deadly Strangers (1974)A man and woman meet on the side of a road and decide to share a ride. It is revealed that there is a raving psychopath on the loose and it is pretty obvious that it is one of these two people. An effective suspense story with terrific performances by Hayley Mills and Simon Ward. Though the story may at first seem like a transparent / psycho-on-the-loose chiller, the film has some strikingly effective new twists, and there are enough red herrings for two films!
More..Endless Night (1971)Gripping tale from the pen of Miss Agatha Christie, in which a young chauffeur, after marrying his beautiful and wealthy boss, thinks he has it made until he finds that their 'dream' house is more of a nightmare than a pleasure to live in. After taking up residence, their lives take a decided change for the worse.
More..Sky West And Crooked (1966)This is a wonderful little movie. While it centers on the character played by Hayley Mills and her storyline, to me, its more about all the people in this British countryside community. Each one unique, down to earth, in close quarters interacting with each other. It fits all of them in a nice "tight" package. I'm very glad I just happened to see it.
More..Summer Magic (1963)Disney musical about Mother Carey, a Bostonian widow and her three children who move to Maine. Postmaster Osh Popham helps them move into a run-down old house and fixes it up for them. It's not entirely uninhabited, though; the owner, a Mr. Hamilton, is a mysterious character away in Europe, but Osh assures them he won't mind their living there, since he won't be coming home for a long time yet. The children and a cousin who comes to live with them have various adventures before an unexpected visitor shows up.
More..The Chalk Garden (1964)A grandmother seeks a governess for her 16 year old granddaughter, Laurel, who manages to drive away each and every one so far by exposing their past, with a record of three in one week! When an applicant with a mysterious past manages to get the job, Laurel vows to expose her. Meanwhile, Laurel's married-divorced-married mother tries to get her back.
More..The Trouble With Angels (1966)Hayley Mills and June Harding act up in this affectionate comedy as two juvenile pranksters at the St. Francis Academy for Girls. It is up to Rosalind Russell, starring as the patient and understanding Mother Superior, to show them the right path.
More..Twisted Nerve (1968)Martin is a troubled young man. With a mother who insists on treating him like a child, a stepfather who can't wait to see the back of him, and a mongoliod brother shut away in an institution, is it any wonder he retreats into an alternate personality...that of six year old Georgie? It is Georgie who befriends Susan Harper, but friendship soon turns into obsession. When Susan begins to distance herself, something inside Georgie snaps and he embarks on a killing spree, with Susan as the next target.
More..The Truth About Spring (1964)Tommy Tyler a lazy Caribbean sailor and his tom-boy daughter, Spring are out to search for a buried treasure. Tommy brings aboard William Ashton, a young lawyer to help with the search. Ashton turns out to be handy when they encounter dangerous rivals. Tommy also tries to play match maker between Ashton and Spring-a difficult task indeed.
More..More rare films coming soon.
New for August 15th 2005
Last week saw the launch of our new Forum for film lovers. Please check it out and sign up at
Moviepursuit. It is of course all completely free. Moderators and topics are welcome.
New rare films added this week are:
Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1975)Jonathan is sick and tired of the boring life in his sea-gull clan. He rather experiments with new, always more daring flying techniques. Since he doesn't fit in, the elders expel him from the clan. So he sets out to discover the world beyond the horizon in quest for wisdom.
More..When The Wind Blows (1986)Based on Raymond Briggs' book. A old British couple, Jim and Hilda, who live in the countryside, believe in the fact that the Government will always know what it is doing. However the world is fast heading for the Third World War between the US and the Soviets.
More..The Shooting Party (1985)Autumn, 1913: on the eve of the Great War, a small party of lords and ladies gather at the Hertfordshire estate of Sir Randolph Nettleby. A code of propriety governs all: dress, breakfast, relations with the estate's peasants, courtship, shooting, adultery.
More..
Who are Vicpine ?
Vicpine are specialists in finding rare and deleted videos and dvd's. The company has been active since Dec 2001 sellings thousands of rare films on Ebay, Amazon and
Vicpine.co.uk
