John Wayne Movie:

		List Price: $26.97		Label: Starz / Anchor Bay Salesrank: 69009 Released: April 5, 2005
		Our Price: $149.50
		Used Price: $81.95
		MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
This exclusive collection brings together five of Ealing Studios' greatest comedies, starring such beloved legends as Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Hugh Griffith, Margaret Rutherford and more. Each classic film in the EALING STUDIOS COMEDY COLLECTION has been newly remastered from pristine vault materials, many available for the first time ever in America.

Description of Ealing Studios Comedy Collection (The Maggie / A Run for Your Money / Titfield Thunderbolt / Whisky Galore! / Passport to Pimlico):
Ealing Studios was the birthplace of the most delectable crop of movies to decorate postwar cinemas, a group of veddy British comedies that nevertheless spoke the international language. By necessity, the Ealing Studios Comedy Collection takes second place to the Alec Guinness Collection, the latter being the crème de la crème of Ealing's signature actor. But the Comedy Collection is nevertheless a stem-to-stern delight.

Three films from Ealing's zenith year, 1949, anchor the collection. Passport to Pimlico captures the mood of postwar London via an absurdist plot: the detonation of an unexploded bomb in Pimlico reveals a 400-year-old decree proclaiming the neighborhood an independent royal territory of Burgundy. Their independence thus established, the locals (led by Stanley Holloway) celebrate their freedom from rationing and taxation. A Run for Your Money follows two Welsh coalmining brothers after they win a newspaper contest for tickets to a London rugby match; in this modest comedy, Alec Guinness sketches one of his eccentric little supporting gems.

Whisky Galore! is one of the best Ealing films--funny but also rather lovely. During the war, the remote Scottish island of Todday is starved for scarce whisky, until a shipwreck strands thousands of cases of "the water of life" tantalizingly within reach. Basil Radford is hilariously misguided as the island's chief of Defense, and Joan Greenwood lends her fetching presence--but every member of the large ensemble is terrific. The gifted Alexander Mackendrick debuted as director, and his sense of timing and tone is impeccable. (It was retitled Tight Little Island in the U.S., where it scored a big hit.)

Mackendrick also directed the marvelous 1954 comedy The Maggie, with Paul Douglas as a go-go American businessman whose cargo (and life) is slowed by a broken-down scow chugging from Glasgow to the islands. Traces of melancholy underlie the humor, and one wonders if this film might have been a model for the thematically similar Local Hero. Finally, The Titfield Thunderbolt, from 1953, is a Charles Crichton-directed farce about a small town going into the railroad business (and the first Ealing comedy in color). Its anarchy borders on the abrasive at times, although Stanley Holloway is in fine form as a benefactor who demands his own drinking car on the train. --Robert Horton

Ealing Studios Comedy Collection (The Maggie / A Run for Your Money / Titfield Thunderbolt / Whisky Galore! / Passport to Pimlico) Reviews:
Bob Caccavale
2008-04-17 - I've searched for years for one of these movies, well, to my surprise I got all four in one package. They are wounderfully funny,great plots,a beginning, a middle, and a end, and great British humor. could not be happier

Brit's humor
2008-03-03 - The first one we've watched "Whiskey Galore" is a classic and one we've thought of and hoped to see once more for years. It was wonderful to see the cast and the action and the story but our one regret is that it does not have subtitles in English. The sound track is difficult to follow with the accents and it would have been perfect if there were subtitles to read along with the action. It is fun to see all these old classics and it brings back memories but the sound made it difficult.

horrible sound transfers--needs subtitles
2008-02-19 - can't remember any of these being all that good in sound quality. I'm currently turning off "Passport to Pimlico" due to the horrible sound transfer. No subtitles available either.

ealing studios comedy
2008-02-16 - guess this should be a SUPERB collection
but unluckily for non english speakers
it is very difficult to understand all the
dialogues as it has
NO SUBTITLES (could be English or Spenish ones)

Has noted lot of wonderful collections with
the same problem

Delightful collection
2007-11-21 - It's a nice, smooth, salubrious, collection of gentle comedies from Ealing. I'd put The Titfield Thunderbolt more or less at the bottom of the list, but they're all amusing and often a little wistful. "Whiskey Galore" is an understated treasure. All are very British, don't you know.