Three tense days fill these seventy-seven minutes. A model of psychological tension, this film - taken from a play which has fallen from sight -
is a marvel of small-town life turned upside down when a seventeen-year-old pupil disappears one dark night after meeting the Latin teacher upon whom she has a crush. An example of the way in which characters drive plot, this turns many variations upon lives of quiet desperation. Or, in the case of the girl's aunt (Pamela Brown) not so quiet: unable to shake of the end of an affair twenty years ago, she never loses an opportunity to remind people of it. A splendid study in malignancy. No shoestring incarnation of Peyton Place, this depiction of the Home Counties in turmoil has lavish, almost noir attention to detail, from close-ups of a sinister hand pushing coins in a telephone box to the dredging of the river. Seek this out.