Time Lock – 1957 | 73mins | Thriller | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Tense low-budget thriller based on a play by Arthur Hailey, produced and directed by the Carry-On team of Peter Rogers and Gerald Thomas. A young Sean Connery features in his debut-speaking role portraying a welder.

Set in Toronto, Canada. It is 6 o’clock on a Friday evening at the South York branch of the Crown Canada Bank. Lucille Walker (Betty McDowall) calls in to pick up her husband, Colin (Lee Patterson), accompanied by their six-year-old son, Stephen (Vincent Winter). After locking the doors, Colin pre-sets the time lock of the vault for Monday morning – 63 hours later. Having been distracted by a car-crash outside, they are about to leave when they realise that Stephen is missing and locked in the safe. As the airtight vault cannot be opened manually, it is a race against time to save the young child before he suffocates. Doctors calculate Stephen has only 12 hours of air supply. The police try to instruct the boy via a loudhailer, an expert tries to open the lock with an acetylene torch, but all to no avail. Finally, as attempts to rescue the boy become increasingly desperate, a local radio station appeal for help in finding vault expert, Pete Dawson (Robert Beatty), yields hope. The radio station helicopter picks-up Dawson and rushes him to the bank to organise the child’s rescue.