Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)

Bunny Lake Is Missing is a British horror film first released in 1965, directed by Otto Preminger.  The film is based on a novel by Marryam Modell and stars Laurence Olivier, Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea, Martita Hunt and Anna Massey.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


A few days after arriving in London, American Ann Lake leaves her four-year old daughter Bunny at a school for toddlers before rushing off to meet the removal men at her new apartment.  That afternoon, Ann is unable to find Bunny at the school and discovers that not one teacher has seen her all day.  Convinced that her daughter has been abducted, Ann immediately contacts the police, but her brother Stephen assures her that Bunny has come to no harm.   Superintendent Newhouse begins his investigation and is surprised to find that Bunny Lake was not even registered at the school.  When he learns that all of the child’s possessions have disappeared he begins to wonder whether she ever existed...

The success of Hitchcock’s Psycho in 1960 resulted in a spate of similar psycho-thrillers, most involving attractive young women in danger from a psychotic fiend who appears determined to go one better than Norman Bates.   Although it was initially ill-received by the critics and virtually disowned by its director, Otto Preminger, Bunny Lake Is Missing is one of the best example of this popular sub-genre to be made in Britain.   Set in London, the film evokes something of the swinging sixties and Noel Coward’s cameo appearance as a whip-loving sadomasochist with a Pinteresque leer is enough to earn it its enduring status as a cult classic.

What makes the film so effective is Preminger’s skilful appropriation of some of the techniques he employed on his earlier film noir thrillers – unusual camera angles, harsh lighting, disorientating camera movements, etc.  These, together with the discordant soundtrack, all convey a hauntingly expressionistic dreamlike feel, as if what we are seeing is not reality but a child’s distorted interpretation of reality.  The result is deeply unsettling and, at times, genuinely terrifying.  Few films of this period suggest extreme mental aberration and the terror of the victim as convincingly as this one, even if the plot strains credulity to breaking point.

© James Travers 2009

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