Tomorrow at Ten

A race against time for the police when they have to find a kidnapped boy imprisoned with a time bomb, after his abductor dies without revealing the child's whereabouts.

It is worth watching for the bevy of familiar faces from the the 1960s.

Not least of all John Gregson who must have got the part in the TV series Gideon on the back of this production.

To be honest the whole plot is wholly implausible and there are many holes and flaws in it, but it is an enjoyable watch.

Ironic that central to the plot is a golly with a bomb in it. Wouldn't be considered politically correct today.

A pre-stardom Robert Shaw kidnaps a rich kid and locks him in a room with a golliwog in which he has stitched a time bomb that is due to go off at the titular time. He's suitably creepy in a film that starts out strongly but which gets bogged down in some lengthy moral/ethical philosophising despite some unexpected plot twists. A visibly ageing John Gregson huffs and puffs as the uncompromising cop tasked with finding the kid.

Suspenseful thriller in which Robert Shaw gets the lion's share as a kidnapper of a wealthy man's only son.The story almost entirely focuses on the villain and (it's rare ) tries to explain the reason why he did it .It's not only a matter of money as the viewer little by little discovers .The things themselves play a prominent part ,the ticking of the clocks or a jumping jack .The kidnapper is at hand ,under the police's eye ,like in more modern thrillers such as "oxygen" ;and of course there is a quarrel between the scared father and the police .The whole film is a race against the clock ,for the boy is in a house with a time bomb.

George Marlow (Robert Shaw) devises what he thinks is the perfect kidnapping. He buys a doll and places a time bomb inside of it. He then picks a day when a chauffeur who usually takes the son of a rich man to school is ill, substitutes for him, and takes the boy to a large house that he has rented. He then locks the boy in an upper story room in the house with the doll-bomb in the same room. He goes to the rich man and says he wants fifty thousand pounds or else the bomb will go off and kill his son the next day at 10AM . Marlow says he plans to get on an international flight with the money and when he arrives at the destination he will call the rich man and tell him where the boy is so he can be rescued in time.

Not knowing anything but that the boy has been kidnapped, the nanny calls the police. Detective Inspector Parnell (John Gregson) arrives and tells Marlow he is not going anywhere, bomb or no bomb. Parnell has a long success of talking to suspects until they give something away, and he has almost 24 hours to do that here. In the meantime, Parnell is being opposed by the boy's father who even offers Parnell fifty thousand pounds to let the kidnapper go and by his own police commissioner who is a close friend of the rich man. And there are a couple of ironic plot twists along the way. I don't want to say any more than that.

This film could have gotten claustrophobic in a hurry if it was just Shaw and Gregson alone in a room verbally sparring for the length of the film, and I will tell you there is much more to it than that.

Just an errata and clarification for some of the above:

This little gem of a film is now under the ownership of Renown Films and is shown periodically on Talking Pictures TV (TPTV). The film was produced in 1962 as is confirmed by the titles (MCMLXII). It was released in 1963,but not well received, despite the presence of John Gregson who was a well known TV and film actor who often played the role of a police detective. However it was re-released in 1965, after Robert Shaw had appeared as the assassin Donald Grant in the second James Bond film From Russia with Love (1963). William Hartnel, who would subsequently play the first Dr. Who (1963 - 1966) also appears in a cameo as Freddie Maddox (frequently misspelled as Freddy), the father of George Marlowe (Maddox) and, with his wife Masie (Dorothy) Maddox are proprietors of The Golliwog Club.

Marlowe is not whistling the theme to Z-cars as he constructs the 'golliwog bomb', but rather is whistling the old English nursery rhyme 'Pop Goes The Weasel' and even sings a couple of lines. He is whistling an unintelligible song as he enters Abots Mead and walks up the stairs - as he approaches the second floor landing whistling can be heard in the background but it is evident from the shot that he is not whistling. The last segment as walks across the landing to the nursery does,however, resemble the theme tune of Z-cars.

The house from which Jonathan Chester is taken by the kidnapper is cited as being 14 Winnington Road, Hampstead, London N2. Whilst it is built in the neo-Georgian style of many of the larger houses towards the Highgate end of Winnington Road, it is certainly not the house which now stands there. It was in keeping with the area which wealthy financiers such as Anthony Chester (Alec Clunes) lived in the 50s and 60s.

The house at which Jonathan Chester (Piers Bishop) was kept hostage is portrayed as 'Abbots Mead' in Wimbledon, described by the estate agent, Mr. Tamplin (Frank Hawkins) as a detached house on three floors. Whilst the Wolseley police car is certainly seen driving at speed down the A3 expressway (now the Kingston Bypass) the actual location has not been verified.