To my husband falls the selection of videos when we visit the Sally Ann's Thrift Shop, among the superannuated choices that happen to be present at any given time we happen to be there, looking through the second-hand book offerings. It appears that he scored really big the last time we were there. For, last night, cuddling up as we are wont to do on the sofa, with our little dogs fast asleep comfortably next to us, we viewed two of the latest.

Often, we come away with classics. These two were most certainly classics. Of a type. Like most men, my husband, when nothing else is available that looks desirably like a reflection of what we would enjoy viewing, will eventually make a selection among the prevailing Hollywood 'action films'. There are some actors he just happens to find entertaining.

And so it was, this time around; with nothing else available, he selected two films: a. Palmer's bones, with Rutger Hauer, and b. M=I-2 (Mission Impossible 2) with Tom Cruise. Perhaps it was the presence of Anthony Hopkins that sold him on that one.

When he decided which we'd view, it was Palmer's bones. As we settled in to watch, lights dimmed, the usual Interpol message was displayed - and then, well visions of pouting, unclad young women fully bosomed and ready for sex. Smut, in other words, not quite what we'd expected. The film that we had unwittingly acquired was actually the French-language film "Emanuelle", and it was, I imagine, pure porn. The outside slipcover and the interior cover for the video both earnestly promised Palmer's bones, but Emanuelle was what sprang forth in full pulchritude and colour.

Out it came and in went Mission Impossible. And it was entertaining at first, mostly because of the geographical and geological settings, particularly the rock climbing portion which was mesmerizingly fascinating. Above all the grandeur of the scenery, the vastness of it all was amazing. We do have some familiarity with such scenes, having ourselves done, in the past, a modest amount of mountain climbing, albeit not of the variety witnessed in this film.

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Relieved at first that this film appeared to reflect what the cover offered, we watched a story of intrigue revolving around a sinister biological virus threatening to be unleashed by malign forces whose agenda was not ideological but the acquisition of treasury, gradually unfold. And as it did, and the story progressed, it turned out, in fact, to be in a certain league with the earlier one we had rejected.

Simply another form of porn, this type revolving around extreme acts of bloody violence posing as the righteous battling the enemies of the world; fascistic greed on the part of violent petty criminals, and pharmaceutical corporate world that unlocks the secrets of nature at her most destructive, with a view to capitalizing on a curing antidote to the killing epidemic-guaranteed virus they have manufactured.

Exploding bombs, a continual barrage of gun-toting killers on a spree, improbably horrific vehicle chases, all of which conspired to give law and order a very, very bad name.