DVD reviews: Stand By Me | Whisky Galore!

DOING everything right that this week's Super 8 does wrong, the – gulp – 25-year-old Stand By Me seems as fresh today as it did when it first came out in 1986. That's no mean feat given that the 1950s-set tale could have been a simple nostalgia fest. Yet director Rob Reiner smartly imbued the film – adapted from a Stephen King short story, The Body – with an emotional honesty that ensured the kids (played by River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman and Jerry O'Connell) never felt like dusty stereotypes. As they set off to see a dead body, the journey upon which they embark may be that classic figurative journey from innocence to experience, but Reiner never forces the issue and instead lets it come to the fore in an organic way as the boys confront their fears and open up to each other in sometimes painfully honest ways.

That's the film's real trick. The golden glow of its lush cinematography gives it a deceptively idealised, rose-tinted feel that allows its rawer aspects to sneak up on you and hit you hard. The Blu-Ray version comes with a Reiner commentary and a reunion documentary, but the real reason to revisit this is for the eerily prescient shot of River Phoenix fading into the ether – a shot made almost unbearably poignant by the actor's untimely death seven years later.

On a happier note, this digitally restored reissue of Whisky Galore! serves as a useful reminder that Scottish comedies don't have to be eye-wateringly cringeworthy. Still one of Ealing's most beloved comedies, the 1949 film's marvellous conceit revolves around the inhabitants of the fictional Hebridean island of Todday and their efforts to alleviate the wartime whisky drought by liberating hundreds of crates of the stuff from a marooned cargo ship. As officious Customs & Excise officials descend upon Todday, the islanders are forced to hide the water of life in every nook and cranny of their homes and farms, leading to a wonderful scene in which they pour it into hot-water bottles, gas lanterns and water tanks, hide bottles of it in stoves and down drains and even under a sleeping baby.

The whole sequence is a hilarious parody of the Gestapo house-to-house searches prominent in wartime thrillers and while the extent of American-born Scottish director Alexander MacKendrick's involvement remains in doubt (it's possible that fellow Ealing director Charles Crichton shot key scenes at a later date), what's not in doubt is the sublime, anti-authoritarian feel that has helped make this timeless.

• To order these DVDs, call The Scotsman on 01634 832789.