Tomorrow at Ten **** (1963, Robert Shaw, John Gregson, Alec Clunes, Alan Wheatley, Ernest Clark, Kenneth Cope, Betty McDowall, Piers Bishop, Helen Cherry, William Hartnell, Harry Fowler, Renée Houston) – Classic Movie Review 13,741

London police (John Gregson, Kenneth Cope) race against time to find a boy (Piers Bishop) imprisoned by a kidnapper (Robert Shaw) in a room somewhere with a live time bomb stuffed into a child’s toy.

Director Lance Comfort’s 1963 British B-movie crime thriller film Tomorrow at Ten stars John Gregson, Robert Shaw and Alec Clunes, along with Alan Wheatley, Kenneth Cope, Renée Houston, Harry Fowler, and guest stars Helen Cherry, Betty McDowall and William Hartnell, and introducing Piers Bishop and Christopher Ellis.

Detective Inspector Parnell (John Gregson) and Detective Sergeant Grey (Kenneth Cope) of the London police race against time to find a kidnapped boy (Piers Bishop) imprisoned in a room somewhere with a live time bomb stuffed into a child’s toy, after his abductor (Robert Shaw) fails to reveal the child’s whereabouts.

Tomorrow at Ten is a commendably taut, tense and exciting thriller support feature, neatly and satisfyingly acted and suspensefully directed, in which a boy’s kidnapper (Robert Shaw) leaves the kid in a locked room in a rented house – but where? – with a time bomb ready to go off tomorrow morning at ten.

The success all starts with a super script by Peter Miller and James Kelley, an original story and screenplay, inventive, detailed and quite chatty, with dialogue that actually sounds real and unusual, quirky characters, giving some excellent British actors good opportunities.

There is no doubt that it helps that there is a tremendously good cast. Robert Shaw is a extraordinarily fine villain as the conniving, smug planner George Marlow, John Gregson is tremendously stalwart as the canny and dogged Detective Inspector Parnell who investigates, Alan Wheatley is nice and slimy as Parnell’s super-supercilious boss Assistant Commissioner Bewley, and Alec Clunes is good as the boy’s rich distraught dad who agrees to come up with the £50,000 the kidnapper demands in return for the kid’s life. These performances are all especially subtle and involving.

The film is cast above its grade, which is great. Betty McDowall, Helen Cherry, William Hartnell (in just a brief cameo), Harry Fowler, Renée Houston, Ernest Clark, and Noel Howlett all perhaps have disappointingly little to do, but they all manage to make a very nice little impression anyway.

John Gregson may often have been cast as a police inspector in movies, but there is no impression of coasting here, far from it, he’s totally fired up, and his verbal battles with the kidnapper and the Assistant Commissioner give him all the room he needs to shine. But, it was the end of the line. After ten popular years from 1952 to 1962, Gregson’s film career faded and he never played another leading film role.

Robert Shaw on the other hand was on the cusp of stardom, after attracting huge attention as assassin Donald “Red” Grant in the second James Bond film, From Russia with Love (1963).

Cast: John Gregson as Inspector Parnell, Robert Shaw as Marlow, Alec Clunes as Anthony Chester, Alan Wheatley as Assistant Commissioner Bewley, Kenneth Cope as Sergeant Grey, Ernest Clark as Dr Towers, Piers Bishop as Jonathan Chester, Helen Cherry as Robbie, William Hartnell as Freddie Maddox, Betty McDowall as Mrs Parnell, Harry Fowler as Smiley, Renée Houston as Masie Maddox, Alan Curtis as Inspector, Noel Howlett as brain specialist, Trevor Reid as Q Detective, Ray Smith as Briggs, Norman Coburn as desk man, John Dunbar, Ray Smith, Bernadette Woodman, Marguerite McCourt and Christopher Ellis.

It runs 80 minutes.

Release date: June 23, 1963 (UK).

The film is mainly shot in the studio at MGM British Studios, Elstree Way, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England, but there is a fair amount of local shooting.

Brilliant film fact: Abbots Mead, the secluded disused Victorian house at Barnet Lane, Elstree, Hertfordshire, England, where the kidnapper takes the kid, was bought by Stanley Kubrick soon after this film was made. He lived there with his family from 1965 to 1979 and he edited many of his films, including A Clockwork Orange, in an building next to the house.

Chester’s house is shot at 91 Winnington Road, Hampstead, London.

Tomorrow at Ten is directed by Lance Comfort, runs 80 minutes, is made by Mancunian Film, is released by Planet Film Distributors (UK) and Grosvenor Films (US), is written by Peter Millar and James Kelley, is shot in black and white by Basil Emmott, is produced by Tom Blakeley, is scored by Bernie Fenton, and is designed by Jack Shampan.

The film is of its time. The children’s soft toy that appears significantly in the film is a ‘golliwog’, now universally condemned as an offensive racist caricature. It is a rag doll-like character, created by cartoonist and author Florence Kate Upton, which appeared in children’s books in the late 19th century, and was reproduced by toy-makers as a children’s soft toy.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,741

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