Alfred Hitchcock described this, his third feature, as the first to display the patented Hitch 'touch' (it was also the first to feature a cameo by the director). The foggy streets of London have fallen prey to the 'Avenger' - an unknown killer whose victims are all blonde women. When a handsome lodger (Ivor Novello) arrives at a local boarding house, his suspicious behaviour leads to him being accused of the crimes and hotly pursued by a lynch mob out for justice. But is he really guilty? Composer Nitin Sawhney provides a new musical score for this version of the film.

In World War One, Martha Cnockhaert (Madeleine Carroll) works as a spy in a German hospital, acting for the allies. Aided by orderly Stephan (Herbert Marshall), Martha plots to blow up a German ammunition dump. When Martha accompanies a German Commandant to Brussels, a change in the Kaiser's movements inadvertently reveals Martha's true purpose.

Alfred Hitchcock's most celebrated British thriller, adapted from John Buchan's novel. Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) becomes the victim of mistaken identity when a female corpse is dumped in his flat by a spy ring. He tries to track down the true murderers whilst being pursued by the police, and hooks up with an unwilling accomplice (Madeleine Carroll). Their adventure eventually leads them to a music hall, where the secret of the 39 steps is revealed. Also included is the documentary 'Hitchcock - The Early Years'.

Double bill of stage comedies from the 1930s. In 'Lady in Danger' (1934) English businessman Richard Dexter (Tom Walls) is given the task of protecting the Queen of Ardenberg (Yvonne Arnaud) after a military coup is staged in her country. While he hides her in his London apartment and country house, his fiancée is not impressed with their new living situation. In 'Pot Luck' (1936) a retired detective (Walls) takes on one last case and tries to find a missing vase that has been stolen from attendant Reggie Bathbrick (Ralph Lynn) by a gang of art thieves.

For generations the Stoner and Smith families have lived and worked on the canals. But now this idyllic way of life is threatened - the younger generation long to break away and discover life outside the barges. Ted Stoner (Robert Griffith) dreams of living in a big town but his girlfriend, Mary Smith (Jenny Laird), is more of a traditionalist - will their very different dreams tear them apart?

Sid James triple. In 'The Big Job' (1965), a gang of hapless crooks successfully perpetrate a robbery only to be caught after the fact. Fifteen years later they emerge from prison intent on retrieving their stolen loot - and discover that a police station has been built over its hiding place. Sylvia Syms, Dick Emery, Jim Dale and Joan Sims co-star. In 'Make Mine a Milluion' (1959), an ad-man teams up with a make-up artist in a cunning plot to advertise Bonko detergent on non-commercial television. Despite the trouble it causes, the plan proves a great success and the two chaps soon set up a pirate television station with the intention of beaming their advertisements into other company's TV shows. Again the idea proves successful - but just how long can these two go on avoiding their come-uppance? 'The Lavender Hill Mob' (1951) is a classic Ealing comedy. Nobody would ever suspect gold bullion delivery man Henry Holland (Alec Guinness) of anything other than total devotion to his job. However, with the aid of fellow lodger Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway), he gathers together a gang to carry out a heist, intending to smuggle the gold out of the country by melting it down into miniature models of the Eiffel Tower. All goes well until the consignment of models becomes muddled up with another, non-golden batch. Watch out for an early cameo by Audrey Hepburn.

Double bill of musical films starring Jessie Matthews. In 'Evergreen' (1934), directed by Victor Saville, Matthews is Harriet Green, a famous music hall star with a secret - she has a child, born out of wedlock. To avoid scandal, Harriet leaves for South Africa to raise her daughter there. A dead ringer for her mother and music hall hopeful, the young Harriet Hawkes (also Matthews) returns to London to seek fame. Cunning talent manager Tommy (Barry Mackay) markets the young Harriet as a 'well-preserved' version of her mother, convincing the public. Can Harriet maintain the pretence? Albert de Courville directs 'There Goes the Bride' (1932) which stars Matthews as Annette Marquand, a reluctant bride who flees on the morning of her wedding by boarding a train to Paris. When Annette's purse is stolen at the train station, she elicits the sympathy of the gentleman sharing her carriage, Max (Owen Nares), who invites her to stay with him. With detectives hot on her heels, the last thing Annette needs is to fall in love with a stranger...

A collection of five classic Ealing comedies. 'Kind Hearts and Coronets' (1949) is a period comedy set in the early 20th century. Young Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) vows to take revenge on his family, the D'Ascoynes, when he learns how they disinherited his mother. Working his way into their trust, Louis begins to bump off his distant relatives (all played by Alec Guinness) one by one, but complications set in when Edith D'Ascoyne (Valerie Hobson), the widow of his first victim, falls in love with him. In 'The Ladykillers' (1955), eccentric landlady Mrs Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) believes her new lodger Professor Marcus (Guinness) and his associates the Major (Cecil Parker), Louis (Herbert Lom), Harry (Peter Sellers) and One-Round (Danny Green) to be amateur musicians. They are in fact, however, the perpetrators of a bank heist, looking to whisk their ill-gotten gains out of London. All goes well until Mrs Wilberforce is persuaded by Marcus to claim his 'trunk' from the station; it is only then that the criminal genius's carefully laid plans begin to go awry. In 'The Man in The White Suit' (1951), Sidney Stratton (Guiness) is a laboratory cleaner in a textile factory who invents a material that will neither wear out nor become dirty. Initially hailed as a great discovery, Sidney's astonishing invention is suffocated by the management when they realise that if it never wears out, people will only ever have to purchase one suit of clothing. In 'Passport to Pimlico' (1949), an unexploded bomb goes off in Pimlico, uncovering documents which reveal that this part of London in fact belongs to Burgundy in France. An automonous state is set up in a spirit of optimism, but the petty squabbles of everyday life soon shatter the Utopian vision of a non-restrictive nation. Finally, in 'The Lavender Hill Mob' (1951), nobody would ever suspect gold bullion delivery man Henry Holland (Guinness) of anything other than total devotion to his job. However, with the aid of fellow lodger Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway), he gathers together a gang to carry out a heist, intending to smuggle the gold out of the country by melting it down into miniature models of the Eiffel Tower. All goes well until the consignment of models becomes muddled up with another, non-golden batch. Watch out for an early cameo by Audrey Hepburn.

Collection of three films from Britain's Ealing Studios all starring Alec Guinness. In 'Kind Hearts and Coronets' (1949) an embittered aristocrat sets out to murder the eight heirs that stand between him and succession to the family title. Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) holds no love for the aristocratic family he counts as relations, the D'Ascoynes. The family cast his mother out when she decided to marry a 'commoner', Louis's father, and on her death refuse to allow her to be buried in the family vault. An outraged Louis vows revenge and begins working his way into the trust of the family to provide him with the opportunity to bump off the male heirs (all played by Guinness) one by one. However, complications arise when he becomes romantically entangled with one of the widows of his victims, Edith D'Ascoyne (Valerie Hobson). Will Louis be able to stay the course and murder his way to a Dukedom? In 'The Lavender Hill Mob' (1951) Guinness stars as a mild-mannered bank clerk whose sudden compulsion to rob the bank he works for causes all manner of chaos. Henry Holland (Guinness) has been trusted with delivering gold bullion for 20 years and is considered a safe pair of hands by his employers. However, Henry harbours dreams of becoming rich and hatches a plan to steal the gold when he makes the acquaintance of the artist, Alfred Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway). The pair realise that if Alfred melts the stolen gold into miniature statues of the Eiffel Tower, it could be smuggled safely to France and sold on. However, things go awry when the gold statues become mixed in with a group of ordinary statues, leading to a frantic chase as Henry and Alfred try to recover the gold without their crime being detected. The film features a brief cameo from a young Audrey Hepburn. In 'The Man in the White Suit' (1951) eccentric Sidney Stratton (Guiness) is a laboratory cleaner in a textile factory, who invents a material that will neither wear out nor become dirty. Initially hailed as a great discovery, Sidney's astonishing invention is suffocated by the management when they realise that if it never wears out, people will only ever have to purchase one suit of clothing.

Eccentric Sidney Stratton (Alec Guiness) is a laboratory cleaner in a textile factory, who invents a material that will neither wear out nor become dirty. Initially hailed as a great discovery, Sidney's astonishing invention is suffocated by the management when they realise that if it never wears out, people will only ever have to purchase one suit of clothing.

An unexploded bomb goes off in Pimlico, uncovering documents which reveal that this part of London in fact belongs to Burgundy in France. An automonous state is set up in a spirit of optimism, but the petty squabbles of everyday life soon shatter the Utopian vision of a non-restrictive nation. This Ealing classic earned an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay.

Classic Ealing comedy. During the Second World War, the inhabitants of a small Hebridean island are wilting under a chronic shortage of whisky. When a ship is wrecked on the shore, it is discovered to contain 50,000 cases of malt, which are promptly appropriated by the menfolk of the island. All is well until an English Home Guard commander - determined to see the whisky restored to its rightful owners - calls in Her Majesty's Customs, and the islanders make frantic attempts to hide their treasured alcoholic booty!

Triple bill of war dramas set at sea. In 'For Those in Peril' (1943), Pilot Officer Rawlings (Ralph Michael) is turned down by the RAF for air service on medical grounds and instead joins Air Sea Rescue, helping to pull downed Allied airmen out of the sea. Rawlings is initially resentful of his new job, but gradually comes to appreciate its importance. When the crew of a Boston bomber become stranded at sea in a dinghy, Rawlings and his colleagues become involved in a race against time - and the elements - to save their lives. 'San Demetrio, London' (1943), set in 1940 during the battle of the Atlantic, is based on a true story. The crew of the petrol tanker San Demetrio are left with a near impossible task when she is torpedoed by the Germans. The crew are forced to abandon ship in three lifeboats. Two are picked up by other ships in the convoy, but the third drifts for days until its crew spies the burning San Demetrio on the horizon. Do they board the ship, try to put out its fires and get it back to English shores or do they stay in the drifting lifeboat in the hope of being rescued? In 'The Cruel Sea' (1953), based on the novel by Nicholas Monsarrat, World War Two Lt. Commander Ericson (Jack Hawkins) has already lost one ship to an enemy attack when he is given command of the frigate Saltash Castle. A subsequent confrontation in the North Atlantic tests Ericson's leadership to the limit once again, as he risks sacrificing the lives of his crew for the greater good.

Set during the London Blitz of 1940, Tommy Trinder stars as a kennelman who volunteers for the East End Auxiliary Fire Service. The volunteers have to work alongside the regular firemen, who resent the amateurs but who could also not have saved so many lives without them. This film was made in 1943 with the help of the National Fire Service and is now seen as a tribute to all the professionals and volunteers who put their lives at risk saving others.

Triple bill of comedies starring Will Hay. 'Radio Parade of 1935' (1934) was one of the first screen outings for Hay. He plays the Director General of the National Broadcasting Group (NBG) who hides away in his office unaware that the general feeling about his programming is that it is too high-brow and the public are not happy. However, when he discovers this he decides to take action and promotes Jimmy, his Head of the Complaints Department, to Programme Director. Jimmy decides that a series of variety spectaculars are what the public want and sets about hiring the acts. But obstacles are put in his way and he discovers that the NBG has its own cluster of wannabe variety stars. In 'The Ghost of St Michaels' (1941), the outbreak of the Second World War results in the boys' school of St Michaels relocating to Dubain Castle on the Isle of Skye. The new schoolmaster (Hay) scoffs at the legends of a ghostly piper which haunts the castle - until two headmasters come to a grisly end. Who will become the next victim of the phantom piper? In 'The Black Sheep of Whitehall' (1942), Hay plays Professor Davis, the intrepid head of a correspondence college. Davis gets wind of the fact that a Nazi spy has infiltrated an economic delegation with the intent of undermining attempts to reach a trade agreement between Great Britain and certain South American countries. The effort to expose the dastardly fellow sees Hay adopt various disguises in a steady onslaught of mistaken-identity comedy.

First of the Ealing comedies. A bunch of crooks use a comic paper, featuring stories penned by Felix H. Wilkinson (Alastair Sim), to pass on coded messages for robberies. When the comic's readership, a bunch of East End boys, discover what's going on they go to the police. The local constabulary, however, are no help, and so the plucky lads set out to foil the robbers themselves.

Horror anthology. Architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) arrives at country house Pilgrim Farm thinking that he has been hired to remodel it. He finds the building strangely familiar, and upon entering discovers that he recognizes all of the house's occupants from a recurring nightmare he has experienced. One by one, everyone present relates their own horrific nightmare: Grainger (Anthony Baird) dreams that he is a racing driver recuperating from an accident; teenager Sally O'Hara (Sally Ann Howes) dreams of a Christmas party where she discovers a lone crying child; Joan Courtland (Googie Withers) relates a story of an antique mirror linked to an ancient murder; the next story concerns two golfers who vie murderously for the attention of a young lady; and the final story features a ventriloquist (Michael Redgrave) whose dummy comes to life.

First-time director Seth Holt's stylish noir drama stars George Nader as a fugitive on the run from the police. Sentenced to ten years in prison for robbing an old lady of her valuable coin collection, Canadian thief Paul Gregory (Nader) is swiftly sprung from jail by his former partner-in-crime Victor Sloane (Bernard Lee). Hoping to retrieve his ill-gotten gains, his plans are derailed when a series of double-crosses forces him to go on the run. With the police hard on his tail, Gregory finds himself crossing the Welsh countryside with socialite Bridget Howard (Maggie Smith, in her debut role) in tow.

William Fitch (Will Hay, in his last film) is a disbarred barrister now summoned to court to face charges of sending begging letters. Falling back on his legal skills, Fitch manages to make mincemeat of the cross examining lawyer, Claude Bobbington (Claude Hulbert), and is found not guilty. However, this lucky streak does not last for long; a madman Fitch helped put in prison years earlier has now escaped, and is out for revenge. Fitch turns to Claude for help, but the pair fail to convince the constabulary that there is a real threat to Fitch's life, and are forced to track down the convict themselves.