Reviewed by DAVID VINEYARD:          


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.