DVD Savant has an extensive review of the Miriam Collection special edition of the Samuel Bronston production, from the days when American dollars plus a European army gave you an epic. I have an earlier no-frills DVD of the title, but this new release gives it the restored-to-glory treatment.
It's a film that planted two key sequences in my mind when I was a child, and which have held a permanent place there ever since; a fearsome chariot race along precipitious country roads (staged by the great Yakima Canutt and advancing the story not one jot, but wotthehell), and a final combat between mad emperor and disgraced general inside a wall of shields.
The latter isn't quite up there with the Kirk Douglas/Tony Curtis showdown at the end of The Vikings (actually atop the tower of Brittany's Fort La Latte), but it's close.
My trick with stuff like this is to stick it in my Amazon basket and leave it there. Every time I visit, Amazon flags up any price changes for items in the basket so if they cut the price to a bargain, I'll know.
Which is how I got Jack the Giant Killer for £1.26. Still overpriced. Not for the film, which as a sub-Harryhausen rip at least deserves credit for stealing from the best, but for its piss-poor worse-than-TV full-frame transfer.
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