Phyllis Dietrichson is trapped in a loveless marriage to a man who inspires in her nothing but contempt, but rather than leave him Phyllis decides to kill him and collect on the insurance policy she's had set up with the help of her lover, and naive partner in crime, insurance salesman Walter Neff. The only flaws in their plan are the company's reluctance to pay out so much, the diligence of Neff's increasingly suspicious colleague, (and his 'little man'), and the exemplary ruthlessness of Ph find out more...

Arrested for the fatal beating of an old lady, petty thief and prostitute Barbara Graham is truculent and aggressive with the police who arrest her as a suspect, but when the evidence against her begins to pile up Barbara relises it's not just her innocence she's going to have to fight for, it's her very life. 'I Want To Live' is a harrowing but utterly addictive story, with an Oscar winning tour de force by Susan Hayward in the central role.

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We follow the everyday travails of a group of WW2 French resistance fighters in Marseille, including their engineer leader and a middle-aged woman who sets up anti-German attacks without telling her husband or daughter, as they do battle against the occupying Nazis, collaborators and traitors in their own camp. This tense and atmospheric classic, based partly on Joseph Kessel's novel and partly on Melville's own experiences as a resistance fighter who later escaped France to join the Free French find out more...

Colditz was the P-O-W camp where the Germans put the bad boys, the prisoners, Brits of course, who repeatedly tried to escape. This is their story; a first class tale with British stiff-upper-lips to the fore, nationalistic but heroic. find out more...

Curtis and Poitier both bagged Oscars for their portrayal of two chain-gang prisoners, one black, one white. Forced to make their escape still manacled together, their fight for freedom through the swamps makes a powerful metaphor for the rampant racial hatred of the times. Great support cast too. find out more...