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Curious about all those Region B Hammer Blu-rays from overseas, the ones requiring a region-free player? As a public service, Savant has solicited an expert opinion (you'll have to take my word for that) of a film restoration/transfer specialist who is also an informed fan of the filmic output of the little horror studio at Bray. I know, real Hammer fans buy first and worry about quality later, but this little guide might be of help to the rest of us budget-conscious collectors.

A 'Guest' article Written by a trusted Savant correspondent.

(Note: I receive plenty of emails asking for advice about the quality of Region B Blu-rays, most of which I don't see. I have access to industry people qualified to compare and judge the discs, but they stay off the record, because their employers forbid them to go online with their opinions. They must sometimes simmer in...

Billie Whitelaw has died, aged 82.

The actress, known for her roles in films such as The Omen, died in the early hours of Sunday (December 21) at a nursing home in London, reports BBC News.

Whitelaw's son Matthew Muller said: "I could not have asked for a more loving mum.

"She had an incredible career - but first and foremost she was my mum - and that's who I will miss."

The actress is remembered for her starring role in The Krays, and she also appeared in the more-recent Simon Pegg comedy Hot Fuzz.

During her long career, she was nominated for a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer for her role in Hell is a City, and also won Best Supporting Actress for Twisted Nerve.

Whitelaw was also known for her collaboration with playwright Samuel Beckett, and was made a member of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's...

Above: Spectacular full-scale derailment from the 1931 version of The Ghost Train (and also the 1941 version).

Arnold Ridley is fondly remembered in the UK as one of the stars of seventies sitcom Dad’s Army, about an incompetent and mainly superannuated group of volunteer soldiers in the WWII home guard, a show which made Ridley a national star at age 72 (it continued until he was 81). His sweetly doddering persona made a brilliant foil to the petulant Arthur Lowe, the dithering John Le Mesurier and gloomy Scot John Laurie.

One day, shooting on location in a graveyard, one of Ridley’s younger co-stars mused, “Hardly worth your leaving, is it, Arnold?” A rather harsh bit of humor: if you find it too mean, take comfort in the fact that the young thesp predeceased Ridley by some years, owing to liver failure. What larks!

But looong before Dad’s Army, Arnold Ridley found...

The UK doesn't really do noir, do we? Okay, we had a brief flirtation with the idea around the 70s when Donald Cammell was still directing, but those were psycho-thrillers and grimy character studies more than bleak, existential detective stories. Decades later and it's inner city miserablism for the most part or the collected works of Danny Dyer, where for all the hand-wringing over broken Britain and the state of our troubled youth the violence is still framed in the language of comic books and the bass on the soundtrack gonna rattle ya spine, blud, innit.Seen in that light, Val Guest's Hell is a City (1960) is all the more fascinating; a bluff, imperturbable little police procedural with a tortured copper married to the job,...

★★★★☆ Hell is a City (1960) is somewhat of a novelty - a Hammer production which isn't a horror film and features none of the studio's regulars in major roles. Developed from Maurice Procter's novel by legendary director Val Guest, the film stars 1960s household names Stanley Baker, Donald Pleasance and Billie Whitelaw. Inspector Harry Martineau (Baker) is a hardened Manchester cop who has seen and done it all. Little worries him anymore except when he hears that his old adversary, career criminal Don Starling (John Crawford) - who Martineau was responsible for getting put away - is out of prison and back in town.

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Ill Manors

Preliminary reports on this weren't good: the production was troubled by financial woes and other more unusual problems, such as run-ins with local toughs while shooting on location. It offered no reassurance either in the fact that it was being directed by a first-timer better known for his music (Ben Drew, Aka Plan B). Even the trailer conspired against it, looking like the sort of mockney nonsense that Danny Dyer inhabits.

But Ill Manors is a lot better than that. With constantly stylish camerawork and a rather ruthless way about it, Ill Manors may feature all the requisite drug dealers, gangsters and prostitutes, but it wins out by treating the whole thing as tragedy rather than as a lark. Inspired by films such as Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher, Drew shows his characters locked into a lifestyle that leads nowhere. We follow a succession of people with little hope,...

UK films in the 1950s and 60s led the way in suggesting the boys in blue are less than trustworthy

In these troubled times, when the phone-hacking scandal has heaped ignominy on the police, it is worth pointing out that British cinema has led the way in suggesting the boys in blue are less than trustworthy. In fact, so complete was the turnaround in the two decades between The Blue Lamp, in 1950, and The Offence, from 1972, it almost constitutes a social history in its own right.

Made partly to alleviate a recruitment crisis, and partly to acknowledge a wave of teen delinquency just after the war, The Blue Lamp was the first British film made with the full co-operation of the Metropolitan police. The Met lent the makers their stations, their patrol cars and even their own officers to play small roles. The plot – a neurotic young spiv, played by Dirk Bogarde,...