Bunny Lake Is Missing

Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) is an American recently settled in London. She comes to pick up her daughter Bunny after her first day and finds her missing. Nobody seems to know anything about her. Her brother magazine reporter Steven Lake (Keir Dullea) is the only one who knows her. Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) investigates but soon wonders if she has made the whole thing up.

This movie starts off with such a powerful compelling sequence as Ann Lake try to find her daughter at the school. It's a nightmare that is close to heart for every parent. However as it goes on, I found the movie to be uneven. Olivier is able to hold the various pieces together but I found the brother to be unreal. Director Otto Preminger made a very interesting movie that I found some parts to be more compelling than others. Overall, I found the good parts to be so great that the less good parts aren't that bothersome.

Ironically enough, 'Bunny Lake is Missing' actually was missing for years - not listed in movie guides, not on VHS, only rarely making a ghostly appearance on the late late show.

Fortunately it's being remade with a major young star, Reese Witherspoon. Can't wait to see it, Witherspoon was really good in a movie with Keifer Sutherland where she plays a teen runaway.

So as a result of the remake the original is due out on DVD! So technology really does lead to better living.

BLIM is a very well-made, scary movie. Don't watch it alone, unless you are not easily made, well, uneasy. Not a slasher type movie, or a 'watch out it's going to get you ' scariness, but a psychological thriller.

Like other movies from the 1960's set in Europe, Bunny Lake is austere and stark, the characters have an emotionally remote manner, as if in a trance. Other examples are Alfie, Blow-up, Georgy Girl, and the horrifying Repulsion, the last of which if you are going to try to watch at all, you should not do alone, and you should be warned that it's no picnic watching even Catherine Deneuve come totally unglued while no one seems to suspect a thing.

The various settings in the movie, that should be quaint, innocuous or at worst drab but end up being terrifying in their shadowy oddness. A children's day care center, an apartment, a hospital, and a 'doll hospital'.

Maybe the discordant soundtrack of various whistle-y pan pipe -y sounds is a big reason for the desolate mood of the film.

You just fall in love with beatific Carol Lynley, she is adorable in this and very brave, after all if we are having to watch this nightmare her character is actually living it.

Supporting cast boasts kindly detective Sir Larry Olivier, leering neighbor Noel Coward and high-handed brother Keir Dullea.

If you enjoy this one, you may also enjoy 'The Shuttered Room' another scary flick from 1960s Britain with Miss Lynley being threatened by dastardly Oliver Reed as an evil country lout. Haven't seen it in decades but it scared us as children.

Taciturn director Preminger created here an atmospheric, beautifully shot film of mystery and oddity. Though it isn't 100% satisfying, it remains quite entertaining and visually arresting. Lynley, a newcomer to London, England, takes her four year-old daughter to nursery school and, in a hurry to meet movers at her new flat, briefly leaves the child in the custody of a rather unfriendly cook. Later, the cook has quit and the child is gone. Worse, no one seems to have ever known about the child or has ever even seen her except Lynley and Dullea. No tangible trace of the child seems to exist! Olivier is brought in to head up the investigation and scours all the various clues and suspects, all while trying to determine if there even IS a child to be searching for. The film kicks off with famously innovative Saul Bass titles and sets its contrived, but fascinating story in motion with skill. Lynley manages to come off rather well in a difficult role. Dullea is also strong in a part that never gets completely fleshed out. Olivier is reliably commanding and slick and offers a lesson in understated excellence. These performers are surrounded by a lustrous galaxy of terrific British character actors. Most notable is the delicious Hunt as the vaguely sinister, yet delightful headmistress of the school. Massey is also excellent as a frustrated teacher. Coward pops up as a creepy landlord with designs on Lynley. It is not easy to watch the somewhat disintegrated legend put the moves on her. Many other great people show up and, even if they don't get a moment of glory, their participation adds greatly to the class and feel of the film. A sense of dread and uncertainty hangs over the movie as the viewer is never exactly sure what is going on. As stylish and intriguing as the film is, certain sections drag on a bit too long, none more so than the climax, in which Lynley must fend off the villain of the piece and seems to go out of her way NOT to escape or harm the person, at times. Even with this and other gripes (like a needless, annoying and intrusive "appearance" from The Zombies), the film is well worth watching and deserves a better availability and reputation than it currently accords.

This engaging psycho-thriller truly is an overlooked treasure and probably the most underrated of all of the great Otto Preminger's films. I always thought that Carol Lynley was a very beautiful woman and a very strong presence in motion pictures, but until I saw BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING, I never realized what a magnificent actress Miss Lynley truly is. As the frantic single mom searching for her little girl who seems to have disappeared without a trace, Miss Lynley gives the performance of a lifetime, and Keir Dullea is also impressive as Lynley's concerned brother. Laurence Olivier, Martita Hunt, Noel Coward, and Finlay Currie are also in there doing their usual wonderful work. A must-see, especially for the mystery lover.

Stuffed with wonderful character actors and recognisably shabby locations - like the little school in an old house where the cook is making junket (whatever happened to junket?). Her accent is familiar: she once played a beautiful spy in 39 Steps, warning of leaking "secrets vital to your air defence". After many viewings, it's easy to forget that it's a mystery and everyone is a suspect. Has Bunny been abducted by sinister Martita Hunt (the slightly dotty founder of the school)? Or creepy Noel Coward (the landlord)? The Zombies song "Just Out of Reach" keeps being reprised.

They were more famous, though, for a song called "She's Not There". How's that for intertextuality? The script is by John and Penelope Mortimer. John is famous for the Rumpole series, and Laurence Olivier's detective has echoes of Rumpole, muttering that bus conductors never notice anything - they are dreamers and philosophers. Noel Coward's character too is very Mortimerian: "There are many at the BBC who bear bruises left by the love of Horatio Wilson." Mortimer reveres Shakespeare and Conan Doyle and sometimes it shows.

The plot is stuffed, sometimes clunkily, with issues that were only just beginning to be spoken about: perversion (in the person of whip-wielding Horatio), teen pregnancy (Anne Lake seems about 20), unmarried motherhood and abortion. Anne chose to have her baby and raise it on her own. This is still a difficult course of action, but in 1965 it was groundbreaking, especially if you were - as she is - middle class.