Buddy's Movie Reviews

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• Junebug
• WALL-E

This is one of those old horror movies from the sixties filmed in black and white. Unlike the horror movies of today that depend on lots of blood flowing and crazy men in hockey masks, these movies got their terror from the characters' personalities. The twists of reality. What you thought was nice and normal and happy and wonderful when looked at a bit more closely turned out to be evil and horrible. When the happy rock of tranquility was turned over, it revealed just plain nastiness. The horror lies in just which happy rock will reveal these things. Your family's happy rock? Oh, no!!!!

This makes a lot of sense for the times. In the 50's and early 60's everyone was pretending to be happy and normal. Of course there was depravity lying close to the surface, everyone's biggest fear. And so there's this movie.

We start out viewing a beautiful big estate, a handsome young man picks up a child's toy and puts it in his suitcase, drives away in his sportscar, stops at a phone booth to have a conversation with a lovely young woman. They're arranging the details for the move to their new apartment and dropping off the sweet child they take care of, Bunny Lake.

One would assume that this is a young married couple, but soon after their child disappears we learn they are really brother and sister. Okay, that's a little weird, but okay. The sister relies heavily on her brother to take care of things. The police are investigating the child's disappearance but they can find no evidence that the child really existed. Someone has gone to the new apartment and taken all of Bunny's belongings including her passport.

The police begin to suspect that the young mother has made up her child, modeled after a childhood imaginary playmate. At the school there is an old teacher who lives upstairs who tries to help the police solve the mystery.

After a while I myself began to wonder if there is a child. She's never been shown on screen. Perhaps the woman is mad. Okay, I don't want to spoil the movie for you, so I won't tell you what winds up happening. Let me just say that wow, there is a surprise. Everything is turned upside down.

My one criticism of the film is that once we learn what's really happened to Bunny and the perpetrator of this evilness is discovered, we're dragged through another 30 minutes of agony as we wait to see whether the child will be rescued and we'll be able to breathe easy again. Maybe it's just my fast-paced, 21st century sensibility, but I would have preferred more like 20 minutes of agony.

Otherwise this is a great psychological thriller. I recommend it!