DVD reviews: Silent but deadly

A videogame adaptation that's surprisingly good joins Luis Buñuel's 1961 Palme d'Or winner Viridiana and the story of Britain's last hangman in this week's DVD releases...

Silent Hill
Pathe Distribution Ltd, 15, £19.99
Review: Larushka Ivan-Zadeh
***
As video game adaptations go, Silent Hill is impressively more sophisticated than the usual boom and Doom. Desperate to cure her adopted daughter's sleepwalking, Radha Mitchell plumps for shock treatment. Against the advice of her husband (Sean Bean), she takes the child (Jodelle Ferland) to the town she raves about in her nightmares - only to find a ghost shanty with minimal mobile reception and a history of witch burning. And that her daughter has skipped off and she doesn't know where to find her. Relying on subtleties such as spooky snowfall to capture the original game's eerie atmosphere, this has imagination splurging out of its eyeballs. It's a visual feast, teeming with the likes of humanfaced cockroaches and triangularheaded demons - even if the illogical and tortured plot scenario is relentlessly uninvolving.
Extras: Making-of featurette, Silent Hill origins, building Silent Hill, Stars And Stunts, Creatures Unleashed, Creature Choreography.

Pierrepoint
Twentieth Century Fox Entertainment, 15, £19.99
Review: Nina Caplan
***
Lots of little boys dream of following in Papa's footsteps. Albert Pierrepoint achieved that aim and became Britain's last hangman. Adrian Shergold's film steadfastly refuses all prurience, quietly telling the story of the ordinary delivery man who committed legally sanctioned murder more than 600 times - mostly, it appears, without any stronger emotion than professional pride in his deftness. This is Mike Leigh-style territory and Leigh regular Timothy Spall is superb as Pierrepoint, as is Juliet Stevenson as the wife whose spouse's 'business trips' indicated something rather more unsavoury than an affair. But although this mostly sticks to the truth, Shergold can't resist the lure of a big climax and our sneaking sympathy for Pierrepoint lessens as the truth shades into a familiar Hollywood trajectory. Interesting, though, and very well acted.
Extras: None.

The Uncanny
Network, 15, £12.99
Review: Larushka Ivan-Zadeh
***
A "ferocious collection of feline tales" from 1977, The Uncanny is more likely to raise a Cheshire Cat grin than prickle your whiskers. But if you like your horror as camp as an Easter jamboree in Las Vegas, there's much to relish about this cult portmanteau. Peter Cushing is the nervy author, trying to get sceptic Ray Milland (The Lost Weekend) to publish his book on killer cats. Cue three separate tales of meany kitten-haters getting their comeuppance. Most unforgettable, and surprisingly chilling, is the modern middle segment where a witch's child brutally shrinks her bitchy cousin to mouse size. How much you'll actually be frightened depends on how terrifying you find a tabby blinking at you. But the Edwardian segment where Joan Greenwood becomes Kitekat proves rather a ghoulish treat.
Extras: 1973 and 1993 interviews with Peter Cushing.

Viridiana
Arrow Films, 15, £15.99
Review: Siobhan Murphy
****
Luis Buñuel was allowed back to his native Spain from exile to direct Viridiana. The resulting raspberry to the Catholic Church so shocked the Spanish censors that, despite bagging the 1961 Cannes Palme D'Or, it was immediately banned. It remains, however, arguably the surrealist filmmaker's best work, fired with anger at the Church's blatant hypocrisies and how it had colluded with Spain's fascist dictatorship. Viridiana (Silvia Pinal), a fanatically pious nun preparing to take her vows, visits her uncle Don Jaime (the brilliant Fernando Rey), who tries to seduce her and hangs himself when he's rejected. Viridiana stays on in his country house, with his illegitimate son Jorge (Francisco Rabal), and takes in a group of beggars who are far removed from "noble poverty" - when left alone, they run amok. The humour is pitch-black throughout, the enmity between the actors playing the beggars is palpable and Bu"uel and his three leads skilfully avoid caricature. Viciously unsubtle it may be but Viridiana is stylish, gleeful good fun.
Extras: None.