The Michael Caine Collection--The Ipcress File, Educating Rita, The Eagle Has Landed, Without a Clue [DVD] [1977]

The Ipcress File - a shamefully overlooked masterpiece of the Cold War spy intelligence genre. Caine plays Harry Palmer who - shock horror- not only wears glasses but cooks! At the time the film was made this was an extremely daring move to make and very much against stereotype. It is not an action film as such and is not another James Bond film but for me is can hold is own against any of the 007 series. It looks excellent, moody and atmospheric and iwth lots of interesting camera angles. It also has an excellent supporting cast. Top thriller and Caine is excellent.

Educating Rita - Another brilliant film, largely a 2 man show between Caine and Julie Walters, both of whom are superb. Caine plays a drink sodden lecturer who attmepts to teach English Literature to a working class hair dresser. Take it from me, it's a classic.

The Eagle has Landed - it's a war film! Caine plays a Nazi officer who leads a team of German special forces to assassinate Winston Churchill in wartime Britain. Probably the weakest of the films here but that is very much a relative judgement as it is a very good film in it's own right. The sort of thing you watch over the Christmas holidays or on a Saturday afternoon. Look out for Donald Sutherland as an IRA man who aids the Nazis and Larry Hagman as an American officer.

Without a Clue - I know few people who have seen this film, which is a great shame as it's a wonderful comedy that works on the premise that Sherlock Holmes was and incompetant actor hired by Dr Watson as a glamorous front to his detective outfit. Caine plays Holmes and Ben Kingsley shows that he is also a very funny man as Watson. I laughed. A lot. Jeffrey Jones (much underrated American character actor) plays Lestrade. Best line (among many best lines) = "I've got it! His real name is Arty Morty!".

So... why only 4 stars. Nothing to do with the films. It's the DVD's. the DVD's are from Carlton and the thing they seem to have in common with all DVD's from Carlton is that a) there are no special features (sorry, i don't count scene access as a special feature) and b) there is no real improvement in terms of picture and sound quality over the VHS version. Basically what you are getting here is 4 VHS videos that happen to play in your DVD player rather than youe video. Having said that, at this price it seems a little stingy to complain but it would have been nice to have had some extra fun to round things off and I think that generally Carlton need to get their act together.

In conclusion - classic films worth 5 stars on their own but the DVDs may as well be VHS tapes. But at this price...