Wed 11 Nov 2015
A Movie Review by David Vineyard: TIME LOCK (1957).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Suspense & espionage films[7] Comments
TIME LOCK. British Lion Film Corporation, UK, 1957; Robert Beatty, Lee Patterson, Betty McDowall, Robert Ayres. Screenplay by Peter Rogers, based on the play by Arthur Hailey. Directed by Gerald Thomas.
Mediocre acting, claustrophobic sets, no production values, trite dialogue, short running time, this film is little more than a television episode with an attitude, all of which begs the question, why is it so damn suspenseful
Based on a play by Arthur Hailey (Runway Zero Eight aka Zero Hour , Airport, Hotel) the entire story takes play just before the weekend as accountant Lee Patterson’s little boy wanders in and gets locked in the vault of a small Canadian branch bank on his birthday. The time locks are set for 63 hours and can’t be opened. The boy can’t possibly survive that long with only 500 square feet of oxygen. The vault cannot be broken into or forced , and the only man who can open the safe just left on a fishing trip.
With a little money, a better cast, and production values higher than a high school play the team responsible for some of the “Carry On” films could have done better, but none of those things are present, and the acting is uniformly one note, and a sour one at that.
But this film gets under your skin. Despite the bad acting and trite script, despite the lack of production values, despite the by rote suspense, the damn film gets under your skin and keeps egging you on until there is real relief in the final moments of the film.
It may be the best amateur bad professional movie ever made.
No one comes off looking too good here, but there is a young Sean Connery, who at least can act more than anyone else in the film, as a welder battling to cut into the vault in time to save the boy and knowing it is an impossible job. You might not predict a great career for him based on this, but he does show screen presence, which no one else in this film has.
Robert Beatty could act, and Lee Paterson has some charm, neither of which shows here, but as you sit cursing the production values and acting you will still be wracking your nerves waiting to get the kid out of that damn vault. How a really inept bad movie generates that much suspense is a mystery someone else will have to solve.
November 11th, 2015 at 8:07 pm
My review of this film was posted on this blog nearly four years ago. You can go read what I had to say by going to
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=13477
but you won’t find an ounce of disagreement between David’s opinion and mine.
You will also find that I used exactly the same images. Sometimes I get lazy.
November 11th, 2015 at 10:34 pm
This is a tribute to the power of a good story. A child is locked in a vault, air is running out, can he be saved, that is all there is here. Not good acting or direction or script or even decent sets, but that story carries through somehow.
November 11th, 2015 at 10:55 pm
If I can still see scenes from a movie four years after the only time I’ve seen, it has to have something going for it, and this one does.
November 11th, 2015 at 11:41 pm
For those who want to watch it, it is on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWN7TUhKNJo
The limit of time is always a great way to slowly build suspense. As I was watching the ending I noticed another favorite filmmaker trick – silence. No music in the background. Minimum of dialog. The crowd silence.
I did find the crowd reaction to the fate of the boy odd and too underplayed.
November 12th, 2015 at 5:27 am
Arthur Hailey tended to take a good idea and smother it in soapsuds, but sometimes, when the fat is cut away, the power of the idea comes through.
November 12th, 2015 at 10:07 pm
Steve,
I remembered scenes from this for over thirty years, so it has something going for it, and story is all I can think of.
Michael,
It’s hard to tell with this one whether that silence is the result of choice or budget. What matters is that it works.
Whatever else, and however dressed up with suds, Hailey had a gift for finding simple dynamic concepts that kept readers turning pages. His prose was at best workmanlike, and he did tend towards soap, but at least through HOTEL and AIRPORT I enjoyed his novels.
April 19th, 2021 at 12:09 am
I came looking for this review on this site. I’m well rewarded.
Enjoyed the review above; and enjoy the stills of neophyte Connery.
I too, was surprised to learn that Alex Hailey was the author of ‘Time Lock’.
But regarding the ’tilt’ of the above review: I had this same uncharitable attitude the reviewer extend to this movie, as I had towards another young Connery film: ‘Hell Drivers’. I approached it similarly: ‘How can a flick so cheap looking, white-knuckle me in my seat’? But that movie did.
No matter. Here is my root question: if this flick was remade or rewritten today: wouldn’t it make better suspense if the welder enlisted to crack the safe, was a criminal? An actual, convicted safecracker? Maybe a bloke on parole? Has that plot ever been done?
Might be that Connery and Nicholas Cage do something like this in, ‘The Rock’, but I don’t know. Not even Plummer in ‘Triple Cross’ fits.
Anyway, open question. In what other film is a criminal asked to help authorities to save a life of an innocent? Just curious.