BUBBY LAKE MISSED BY A MILE

BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING (1965)
dir: Otto Preminger

BUBBY LAKE MISSED BY A MILE
MAD #102, April 1966
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

The first few MAD parodies would do the credits and make puns of the actors' names as well, here it made sense, since the titles by Saul Bass were sort of a scene in the opening of the film.

Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) has just moved to Great Britain and put her daughter in daycare. After coming to pick her up, she is not there, hence the title.

(”Crazy Otto” was a reference to a German composer and novelty song from a decade earlier.)

Ms. Lake pokes around trying to find her daughter to no avail. Her brother (Keir Dullea), having heard the news, rushes right over. They hear a sound upstairs and are told not to go up there, but do anyway, and meet the head of the school. The police, led by Detective Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) come to investigate and she tells them a bit about herself. They go to her apartment and find no evidence the daughter exists. Here we meet the landlord (Noel Coward)

The landlord reveals he is an S/M fanatic and general horndog.
Ann meets Det. Newhouse at a pub, which is an excuse to show The Zombies on TV. They get top billing, even though only a TV clip plays in the background and they play on the radio in another scene.

Note one of the pubgoers is Jiggs from Bringing Up Father


In trying to figure out what could have happened, the brother remembers he dropped off a doll of Bunny's for repair and has the receipt. This will prove her existence. She runs to the doll repair shop to find the doll.

(The note on the doorknob is a play on the tagline “No one will be admitted while the clock is ticking”. The silhouette in the middle panel refers back to the opening titles.)

Now halfway through, we get to the suspense part of the movie. All along it turns out the daughter has been kidnapped by her brother Steven. He sets the doll on fire to destroy the evidence and knocks Ann unconscious. His plan is to gaslight her after she wakes up and tell her there never was a daughter. She knows of the plan and escapes the hospital.

The reason for the kidnapping is because the brother was disappointed the child got in the way of him and his sister having the relationship they did as kids. She goes along with his desire to revert to childhood and plans to get away while they do. The superintendent shows up at the last minute to arrest him. Then Otto Preminger shows up for no reason at all

“When the clock was ticking” was part of their ad campaign. Back then, people just went to the movies at their convenience, catching what they missed when the film started again at the beginning. This being a suspense movie with a twist ending, they needed to make sure it was only seen from beginning to end.