Timothy Bateson Movies

In a disturbing movie about psychosis, Hayley Mills plays Susan Harper, a young student who tries to help a rich, emotionally ill and sinister young man, Martin Durnley (Hywel Bennett). Martin is a schizophrenic who assumes the personality of a six-year-old boy when he is in his "nice" phase. Susan talks a store manager out of pressing charges against Martin after he steals a toy duck. Martin wants to take the toy to his mongoloid brother, who is in an institution. Martin's stepfather, Henry (Frank Finlay), enraged by his shoplifting, evicts Martin despite the pleas of his mother, Enid (Phyllis Calvert). Martin, again acting like a young child, is taken in by Susan's mother, Joan Harper (Billie Whitelaw), who runs a boarding house. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

The Torture Garden is an "omnibus" chiller, adapted from four short stories by Robert Bloch (Psycho). Each is introduced by Burgess Meredith, playing a sinister carnival barker by the name of Dr. Diabolo. The doctor's audience consists of five people, four of whom are apprised of their ultimate fates as Diabolo weaves his stories. In "Enoch," a young playboy falls under the spell of a cannibalistic cat. In "Terror Over Hollywood," a famous movie star is revealed to be an android. In "Mr. Steinway," the "villain" is a killer piano. And in "The Man Who Collected Poe," the title character murders another collector over a valuable Poe manuscript--only to receive retribution from ol' Edgar himself. If we told you anything about the fifth person in Meredith's audience, we'd be giving away the ending, wouldn't we now? The individual episodes tend to rise and fall depending upon the strength of their stars. Among those present in Torture Garden are horror-flick regulars Jack Palance, Peter Cushing, Robert Hutton, Michael Ripper and Niall McGinniss. No, this isn't a Hammer Production; it was put together by Hammer's principal British rival of the 1960s, Amicus Films. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Years before the story proper in The Wrong Box gets under way, a "tontine" is drawn up on behalf several young British boys. Each of the boys' parents had placed 1000 pounds in a pool, to be invested and expanded upon. The resultant fortune will go to the last surving member of the tontine. A series of montages depicts the various demises of the heirs (our favorite occurs when one of them is inadvertently beheaded while being knighted by Queen Victoria). Finally, only two of the tontine participants are left: aged brothers Ralph Richardson and John Mills. On his last legs, Mills is determined that Richardson will not outlive him, and to that end attempts to kill his brother; each attempt fails spectacularly, with the doddering Richardson none the wiser. Standing to benefit from the tontine are Mills' dimwitted med-student son Michael Caine and Richardson's greedy nephews Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. When Richardson is supposedly killed in a train wreck, Cook and Moore don't want the authorities to find out, so they appropriate what they think is their uncle's corpse and ship it home in a box. Thus it is that Caine finds the body of a perfect stranger on his doorstep. The farcical complications begin flying about thick and fast from this point onward. Among the participants in this wacky gigglefest are such formidable talents as Peter Sellers, Tony Hancock, Wilfred Lawson, Thorley Walters, Norman Rossington, Irene Handl and Cicely Courtenedge. Based on a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Wrong Box is a delightful harkback to the glory days of Britain's Ealing comedies. We were so wrapped up in the story that we didn't even notice all those TV antennae sprouting up on the rooftops of Victorian London. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Colin (Michael Crawford, who much later won a Tony Award for his role in Broadway's Phantom of the Opera) is an uptight schoolteacher whose housemate, Tolen (Ray Brooks) is a consummate womanizer. Colin imagines a long line of young women in tight white sweaters on his stairwell, waiting to get into Tolen's room. Jealous of Tolen's incredible success with the ladies, Colin asks Tolen for advice on how to get a girl. When Tolen's advice doesn't seem very practical, Colin decides that his first order of business is to get a bigger bed. Colin is also trying to find a third roommate to take a spare room. Tom (Donal Donnelly), who seems compelled to paint everything in sight, happens by the house, and inserts himself in the spare room without so much as saying "hello." Nancy (Rita Tushingham of A Taste of Honey) is new in town, and wanders the streets of London in a fruitless search for the YWCA. She runs into Colin and Tom at the dump, where they are procuring a gigantic bed. They offer her a ride, and proceed to race through London on the bed. Colin seems too shy to speak much to Nancy, despite Tom's encouragement. Eventually, the trio reach Colin's house, where Tolen works his gruff magic on Nancy, and havoc ensues. Capturing late 1960s London in black-and-white, Richard Lester's The Knack. . .and How to Get It was released between the director's two successes with the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night and Help. The script, by Charles Wood (An Awfully Big Adventure) is based on a play by Ann Jellicoe. Future stars Jacqueline Bisset, Charlotte Rampling, and Jane Birkin appear briefly amid all the attractive young women in the film. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

Children all over the city have eaten what they believed was candy. It is then discovered that it is actually a slow-acting, deadly poison. This drama centers on the efforts of the police to find these children before it is too late. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

After several years' absence, Dirk Bogarde returns to the popular British "Doctor" film series in Doctor in Distress. Where once Bogarde's Dr. Simon Sparrow was naive and wide-eyed, he is a bit more urbane in this edition. He even manages to offer romantic advice to his old mentor/nemesis Sir Lancelot Sprat (James Robertson Justice). Sparrow's efforts to smooth the path for Sir Lancelot's amorous pursuit of physiotherapist Barbara Murray puts a strain on his own relationship with comely Samantha Eggar. Doctor in Distress is based on characters created by Dr. Richard Gordon, though the story is an original and not an adaptation of a Gordon novel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Legendary cinematographer (Freddie Francis) directed this Hammer horror film of madness and murder. The story concerns young Janet (Jennie Linden), a student at finishing school who is suffering from a series of recurring nightmares, having witnessed her mother stabbing her father to death. When her nightmares intensify, Janet is brought to the home of her guardian, Henry Baxter (David Knight). Henry is not home, but Janet is put into the care of his live-in nurse, Grace (Moira Redmond). Janet's nightmares continue, in which she sees a woman in white beckoning her into her parents' bedroom. Following the apparition, Janet sees the woman lying in bed, with a knife sticking from her chest. When Henry returns home, he is told by the doctors that Janet should be confined to a mental institution. Henry refuses, but the arrival of Henry's wife changes all that -- when Janet sees Henry's wife, who resembles the woman from her dreams, she grabs a knife and stabs her to death. Janet is committed to an institution for the criminally insane. However, it turns out that Grace had deliberately disguised herself as the woman in white to drive Janet over the brink and kill Henry's wife, so that they could be married. Henry and Grace get married, but Grace then receives reports that Janet has escaped from the institution and is returning to Henry's estate, bent on revenge. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Norman Wisdom does to P.G. Wodehouse in Girl on the Boat what Jerry Lewis did to Gore Vidal in Visit to a Small Planet. The zany Wisdom, put in charge of his aunt's cottage during an English summer in the roaring twenties, decides to invite several of his friends to his posh new digs. Among the invitees is the title character, played by the delightful comedienne Millicent Martin. All sorts of slapstick chaos ensues, but Wisdom manages to save the day before things get hopelessly out of hand. Like Jerry Lewis, Norman Wisdom is an acquired taste, but he's worth sampling at least once. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jigsaw was based on Hilary Waugh's play Sleep Long My Love. The scene is Brighton: A woman's body is found in an isolated beach house. The local constabulary painstakingly assemble the "jigsaw" of random clues to reconstruct the woman's history and her last moments on earth, hoping this will lead them to the killer. Though essentially a mystery, the storyline hides nothing from the viewer; the clues are there if you're willing to pick up on them. At 107 minutes, the film is long but never tiresome. With so many films titled Jigsaw floating around the TV schedule, this 1961 production can be characterized as "the good Jigsaw." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This is a routine tale about the vice squad versus pornographer and blackmailer Augie Cortona (Terence Morgan). After the petty criminal gets out of prison, he discovers his old partners in crime are not interested in him anymore, and the prostitution ring he once bossed is controlled by someone else. His solution is to set up a fake photographer's and model's studio during the day that becomes a place where porno photo men can do their work at night, as call girls engage in their trade with unsuspecting customers. The photographs bring in extra lucre through a blackmail scheme -- Cortona makes the hookers' clients pay to keep their activities quiet. As he is building up this racket, a gangland boss is out to get him -- and so is the vice squad. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this British comedy, an amiable demolitions expert finds himself entangled with a band of criminals masquerading as doctors. In this guise, the thieves attempt to build a tunnel between the hospital and the bank next door. The expert successfully blows open the vault, and the criminals escape with their loot, leaving the hapless safecracker to take the rap. Five years pass before he is released from prison. The man has learned his lesson and tries to reform by taking a job in a small resort. More trouble ensues when he sees the most prominent citizen in town cheating his neighbors by selling bogus shares in the future of the town. To stop him the ex-safecracker enlists the aid of his old gang who begin masquerading as American soldiers offering to build a missile base in the town. Naturally the avaricious businessman desires a piece of the pie and so buys back all of the land he had sold. Using his special talent, the hero blows up the villain's land. Fortunately, the real American army gets involved by offering to rebuild the destroyed town on the land, causing the townsfolk to cheer the former con-man on as the police haul him back to prison. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The economy of the teeny-tiny European duchy of Grand Fenwick is threatened when an American manufacturer comes up with an imitation of Fenwick's sole export, its fabled wine. Crafty prime minister Count Mountjoy (Peter Sellers) comes up with a plan: Grand Fenwick will declare war on the United States. Grand Duchess Gloriana (Peter Sellers again) is hesitant: how can meek little Grand Fenwick win such a conflict? Mountjoy explains that the plan is to lose the war, then rely upon American foreign aid to replenish Grand Fenwick's treasury. Bumbling military officer Tully Bascombe (Peter Sellers yet again) leads his country's ragtag army into battle. They cross the Atlantic in an ancient wooden vessel, then set foot on Manhattan Island, fully prepared to down weapons and surrender. But New York City is deserted, due to an air raid drill. While wandering around, Sellers comes upon atomic scientist David Kossoff and the scientist's pretty daughter Jean Seberg. Kossoff has been working on the deadly "Q Bomb," a football-sized weapon with the destructive capacity of a hundred hydrogen bombs. Suddenly seized with patriotic fervor, Tully captures Kossoff, his daughter and the bomb and brings them all back to Grand Fenwick. Tully has "won" the war-precisely what he'd been told not to do. The upshot of this "victory" is that every world power converges upon Grand Fenwick to claim the Q Bomb for themselves. The satire is heavy-handed at times, but The Mouse That Roared contains several unforgettably hilarious moments, including one startling "false ending." One of the best gags involves the Columbia Pictures logo--a bit frequently cut from TV showings, worse luck. Based on one of the many "Grand Fenwick" novels by Leonard Wibberly, The Mouse That Roared was a success, yielding a Peter Sellers-less sequel, 1963's Mouse on the Moon. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide