Mervyn Johns

The British National Health System is skewered in this comedy set in a rundown London hospital. The hospital is filled with wacky staff members and patients, and the film strives to get all it can from their humorous escapades. The movie also includes a satire-within-a-satire, with "Nurse Norton's Affair" providing a send-up of TV hospital soap operas.

In 1841, a sailor named Ishmael (Richard Basehart) arrives in the New England town of New Bedford, Massachusetts to find work on a whaling ship. Due to a shortage of local lodgings, he is forced to share his room at the inn with a Pacific Islander and harpooner named Queequeg (Friedrich Von Ledebur), whom he befriends after a tense first meeting. Queequeg did not know that he was sharing his room with Ishmael and attacks him when he finds Ishmael in his bed. The owner of the Inn Peter Coffin (Joseph Tomelty) helps straighten the matter out. Ishmael learns that as an outsider, he needs permission from the sailors of New Bedford to join a whaling crew. As the whaling rights belong to the natives of the town. Officers Stubb and Flask grant him the permission when Ishmael agrees to their rights over any profits from whaling. The town church is littered with epitaphs of crews and sailors lost to whale attacks over the years. The next morning, the two of them join the crew of Pequod (They were attracted to the ship as it was adorned with all sorts of ivory, skulls and bones from whale hunting) under the command of Captain Ahab (Gregory Peck), who is obsessed with hunting and killing a legendary, white-skinned whale named Moby Dick, who was responsible for severing Ahab's left leg. Peleg (Mervyn Johns) questions Ishmael's desire to join a whaling ship as he was in the merchant service before and has never thrown a harpoon at a whale. Peleg offers Ishmael a 300th part of the profits when Bildad (Philip Stainton) wanted to offer him only a 777th part. Queequeg is offered 60th part of the profits due to his harpooning skills. The ship is loaded with supplies and readied for departure. Just before their departure, Ishmael and Queequeg encounter a man named Elijah (Royal Dano), who delivers an ominous warning about Ahab and that all but one of the crew who follow him will find their deaths on this voyage. Elijah says that the whale marked Ahab's soul. He says that the crew will smell land where there is no land and that Ahab would fall, but then rise within the hour. And after that all but one crew will perish. Bildad and Peleg get off the ship before it sails. The ship carries Carpenter (Noel Purcell), Pip the cabin boy (Tamba Allenby), Daggoo (Edric Connor), Tashtego (Tom Clegg) (harpooner) and Perth the blacksmith (Ted Howard). As the ship casts off, and for some time afterwards, Ahab remains unseen until he finally appears to align his crew to the hunt for Moby Dick and sets course for the Bikini Atoll, where the whale is said to dwell. While the crew reaps a fair bounty of oil on their journey, Ahab's obsession with Moby Dick remains foremost in his mind. The crew learns that Moby Dick was the whale that took Ahab's leg. Ahab works the crew into a frenzy and makes them take an oath to hunt Moby Dick. The crew know that Moby Dick has killed over 1000 men so far, has a crooked jaw and has many harpoons stuck in its hump. Whaling process requires boats with harpooners to be lowered into the water. The boats are rowed next to the whales, where harpoons are thrust into the whale and the boats are attached to the harpoons with rope. The boats then follow the whale and continue to harpoon it till it sprouts blood and dies. The carcass is recovered and brought aboard to strip off the meat and the whale oil. The bones are stripped and thrown back into the sea. The oil from one whale can power 1000 homes for a year. Ahab has studied the migration patterns of the whales by looking at old shipping charts and knows the exact location where he can find the whales. Yet, he first wants Moby Dick. Ahab says that he predicts to find Moby Dick at Bikini Atoll as per his study of the charts. When the captain Boomer (James Robertson Justice) of a passing ship, who recently lost his hand to the white whale, informs Ahab of Moby Dick's latest whereabouts near the coast of Madagascar, Ahab immediately breaks off a particularly successful hunt, unsettling his crew, particularly his chief mate Starbuck (Leo Genn) (2nd in command). Starbuck argues that hunting a dumb brute that acted out of instinct is not wise. But Ahab is adamant that his ego is worth more to him. Starbuck asks his fellow officers Stubb (Harry Andrews) (2nd mate) and Flask (Seamus Kelly) (3rd mate) for help wresting command of the Pequod from Ahab, which the two refuse. As the Pequod nears the atoll, a top-man falls from the ship's mast into the sea and disappears. Right afterwards, the Pequod is stuck in slack water for days. Casting bones to read his future, Queequeg foresees his death and orders the ship's carpenter to make him a coffin, before he sits down to await his demise. When one of the crew prepares to cut Queequeg's skin for fun, Ishmael rises to his friend's defense, prompting Queequeg to break his death reverie and defend Ishmael. Just then, Moby Dick briefly appears before the ship and escapes before the Pequod crew can pursue him. After rowing the ship out of the becalmed area, Ahab resumes the hunt. To motivate the crew, Ahab offers his own 10% of the profits from the entire voyage to the crew if they kill Moby Dick. They encounter the Rachel, another whaler from New Bedford, whose captain, Gardiner (Francis De Wolff), asks Ahab to help search for his son, who was carried off by Moby Dick. Ahab refuses his aid and departs. When the Pequod hits a typhoon, Ahab uses the gale to speed the chase, endangering the ship. Starbuck attempts to kill Ahab in anger but relents when in a rare humane moment Ahab reminisces about his self-destructive obsession for revenge. The ship is stuck by St. Elmo's fire (a type of Northern lights effect), but Ahab douses it and continues hunting for Moby Dick. Right after this conversation, a strange omen portends the fulfillment of Elijah's baleful prophecy (Ahab smells land in the middle of the ocean and the smell was coming from Moby Dick), which Ishmael recounts to Ahab. The captain seems affected but shakes off his doubts when Moby Dick reappears moments later. The Pequod crew sets out in their boats to bring him down. In the chaotic altercation, Moby Dick destroys Ahab's boat, but Ahab climbs onto the whale's back and stabs him until Moby Dick submerges, entangling Ahab in the harpoon lines on his back and drowning him. Starbuck has a chance to abandon the hunt but chooses instead to avenge Ahab. Moby Dick attacks the boats, smashing them and killing the men; he then rams and sinks the Pequod before disappearing. Ishmael, the only survivor, manages to cling onto Queequeg's coffin until he is found and picked up by the Rachel.

An architect, visiting an English country house, realizes the other guests are familiar from his recurring nightmare. When they share their tales of the supernatural, he is filled with a growing dread. Architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns), seeking the possibility of some work at a country farmhouse, soon finds himself once again stuck in his recurring nightmare. Dreading the end of the dream that he knows is coming, he must first listen to all the assembled guests' own bizarre tales. —Doug Sederberg <vornoff@sonic.net> Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns), an architect, is summoned down to a house called Pilgrim's Farm by a prospective client whom he does not know. On arrival, he experiences strongly the feeling that he has been to the place before. He is taken into the house and introduced by his host to a group of people. These also are familiar, though none of them appear to know him. After somewhat constrained greetings, he tells them that he has met them all, and the house, and the situation is a recurring dream. He explains how this dream always starts quietly and pleasantly, at the present moment, but after a certain small incident invariably begins to darken into a ghastly nightmare, culminating in horror, a horror of his own creation, from which he wakes up sweating with fear. He never remembers his dream for more than a few moments after waking, until the next time it occurs. He then describes the incident which will mark the turning point of his dream, the breaking of a pair of glasses belonging to one of the party, a psychiatrist. Increasingly fascinated, the party one by one reveal that each has at some time undergone an "inexplicable" experience. The narration of these make up the body of the movie. Architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) drives to a farmhouse in the countryside of London and he is welcomed by the owner, Eliot Foley (Roland Culver). Foley introduces him to psychiatrist Dr. Van Straaten (Frederick Valk), his friend Joan Cortland (Googie Withers), his young neighbor Sally O'Hara (Sally Ann Howes), and race car driver Hugh Grainger (Anthony Baird). Craig says that he has the sensation of déjà vu since he had had a nightmare with them in that house, but one lady is missing. However, Mrs. Foley (Mary Merrall) arrives, completing the characters of his dream. The skeptical Dr. Van Straaten does not believe in the supernatural, but the guests describe supernatural events that they have lived. Grainger had a car accident and then a premonition that saved his life; Sally had met a ghost during Christmas; Eliot and his wife had lived an evil experience with a haunted mirror; two golfers loved the same woman and decide to win her in a game, but one of them dies and haunts the other; and Dr. Van Straaten tells the story of a ventriloquist with double personality that is dominated by his dummy. But when Dr. Van Straaten accidentally breaks his glasses and the power goes out, the nightmare continues. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Architect Walter Craig has just arrived at Pilgrim's Farm in the Kent countryside for the weekend on the invitation of its owner, Eliot Foley, who, on reputation, wants to hire him for a renovation, Craig never having met Foley until this moment with everything up to this point having been conducted over the telephone. But for Craig, it is all a case of déjà vu as he not only has seen Foley before, but also the farmhouse, and the other guests at the farm: Foley's mother, Hugh Grainger, Sally O'Hara, Joan Cortland, and Dr. Van Straaten. He has seen them all together like they are now in this very living room in a recurring dream, he even aware that there will be a late arrival of a dark-haired young woman, which is indeed the case. But he remembers little beyond this scant outline as the dream is always a fleeting thought after he awakens until he dreams it again. For some understanding of what is happening, Craig turns primarily to Van Straaten, who he is aware from his dream is a psychiatrist before Van Straaten divulges it himself. Because of the supernatural nature of the situation and wanting the doctor's take, Grainger, O'Hara and Cortland go on to tell stories in which they were directly involved which had a similar supernatural element of an evil and/or deathly nature, that death sometimes for they themselves. Even before Foley and Van Straaten proceed to tell similar stories of their own of which they were peripherally involved, Craig believes that danger awaits him if he stays. Van Straaten is able to convince him to face his fears for reality to play out, dream or no dream, instead of running away. Will Craig live to see the answers if they indeed are forthcoming? —Huggo