Jill Melford Movies

Matthew Chapman wrote and directed this hackneyed love story with Helen Mirren as Beaty, a nightclub hostess who turns tricks. Emory (John Shea) is an expatriate American who works the lights at Beaty's nightclub and is in love with her. But Beaty cannot deal in flowery sentiment, especially since she needs money, not romance, to support her young son. But Emory sees a way to attain money and romance -- he plans to execute a drug deal with his low-life partner and use the proceeds to take Beaty and her son away from the degenerate surroundings and into the light-of-day in the English countryside. But unfortunately, things do not go as planned. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Steed (Patrick MacNee) Purdey (Joanna Lumley) and Gambit (Gareth Hunt) go undercover in one of the seamier neighborhoods of London. The Reason? Several prominent governmnet officials, including a friend of Steed's, have turned up dead. It turns out that someone is using disguised derelicts to replace the dead officials. The real trouble begins when the identical doubles for Gambit and Purdey show up (though it does permit Purdey the plum acting assignment of doubling for her own double). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John Dexter's film explores the struggles faced by a young British man who wants to live as a woman and considers a sex change operation. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

Based on the mystery novel by Marryam Modell (using the pseudonym Evelyn Piper), Bunny Lake Is Missing is a bizarre study in motherhood, kindness, enigma, and insanity. Ann Lake (Carol Lynley), an American freshly relocated to England, wishes to drop off her daughter Bunny for the girl's first day at a new nursery school. Oddly, Ann cannot locate any teachers or administrators, only the school's disgruntled cook (Lucie Mannheim). She is forced to leave Bunny unsupervised in the building's "first day" room, under the reassurance that the cook will be responsible for the child. When Ann returns in the afternoon, the cook has quit and Bunny Lake is missing. The school's remaining employees vehemently deny ever seeing the child, and Ann desperately calls her older brother Stephen (Keir Dullea) for help. Ann was raised fatherless and never married; she and Bunny have lived under Stephen's care and protection for the majority of both their lives. Stephen is enraged by the irresponsibility of the staff, but as Scotland Yard begins its investigation, it comes to light that he had never officially enrolled a child at the school. When Police Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) begins to unravel the Lakes' lives and search their belongings, he discovers that not only did Ann once have an imaginary childhood daughter named "Bunny," but that the young Bunny seemed to have no tangible possessions at the Lake apartment. Bunny Lake (whom we have yet to see onscreen) may not be missing: she may not even be real. Terrified that Newhouse will now abandon the search for the girl, the hysterical Ann sets out to prove her sanity and, in the process, surprisingly uncovers the true psychosis behind the disappearance of her little Bunny Lake. ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide

Wealthy wastrel James Fox hires insouciant cockney Dirk Bogarde as a valet. No sooner has he donned his working clothes than Bogarde begins exercising a subtle but insidious control over his master. Suggesting that the house could use a little fixing up, Bogarde convinces Fox to spend a whopping amount of money on it. But this is just a warm-up session for Bogarde, who by mid-film is calling all the shots in the Fox household, all the while pretending to keep his place. Fox's fiance Wendy Craig sees through Bogarde's game. Bogarde then brings his own lady friend Sarah Miles into the house. At Bogarde's insistence, Miles seduces Fox, thereby loosening Craig's hold on the confused young man. And so it goes. The homosexual subtext of The Servant disturbed some of the more hidebound critics of 1963; Harold Pinter based his cryptic screenplay on a novel by Robin Maugham. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, an unemployed thespian gets a job as an escort-protector and winds up framed for murder after one of his wealthy clients is killed. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, a pair of newlywed workers at an ad agency find themselves unable to honeymoon when she is suddenly assigned to work in the US. While she is gone, her husband begins falling for his sexy secretary, but then realizes he is making a terrible mistake and decides to stay true to his wife. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Rex Harrison is The Constant Husband in this delightful British comedy. It all begins when amnesia victim Charles Hathaway (Harrison) tries to reconstruct his past with the aid of psychiatrist Llewellyn (Cecil Parker). Our hero would have been better off had his memory remained lost: Llewellyn discovers that he's had seven wives -- simultaneously! Lady lawyer Chesterman (Margaret Leighton) tries to keep Llewellyn out of jail, though in fact he'd prefer incarceration to multiple matrimony. Of the seven spouses, Kay Kendall (the real-life Mrs. Rex Harrison) stands out with a sparkling comic characterization. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dane Clark plays a down-at-heels war vet who enters into an odd agreement. If he'll marry a gorgeous blonde (Belinda Lee), Clark will be paid a hefty sum of money. Unfortunately he's being set up as the fall guy in a murder scheme. Awakening from a drunken stupor, Clark finds that all the evidence in the murder points to him--and even he is convinced that he's guilty. Filmed in England, Blackout is based on the Helen Nielsen novel Murder by Proxy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide