The best Mary Merrall’s movies

Architect Walter Craig, 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.

The unruly schoolgirls of St Trinian's are more interested in men and mischief than homework and hockey. But greater trouble than ever beckons when the arrival at the school of Princess Fatima of Makyad coincides with the return of recently expelled Arabella Fritton, who has the kidnap of a prize racehorse on her mind. The first film in the classic comedy series.

W. Somerset Maugham introduces three more of his stories about human foibles.

A pretty young woman will do anything to escape her deadly dull existence in the backlots of Wales. But when she reaches the bright lights of London is the price too high?

After being framed for a policeman's murder, a criminal escapes prison and sets out for revenge.

A fatherless boy tries to make his fortune despite interference from his rich uncle.

Set in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II, the film focuses on the brutality and horror that the allied prisoners were exposed to as the Japanese metered out subjugation and punishment to a disgraced and defeated enemy. This harrowing drama concentrates on the deviations of legal and moral definitions when two opposing cultures clash. Although fictional, this was one of the earliest films to deal realistically with life and death in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during the Second War.

Jean Raymond (Glynis Johns) an upper class woman with a gambling addiction, is given a twelve-month prison sentence resulting from her inability to pay her debts. At first she is overwhelmingly depressed by life in the women's prison; gradually, however, her misery is relieved by the many close friends she makes there. This sympathetic drama traces the contrasting lives and often faltering progress of the inmates of a women's prison.

Encore is a 1951 anthology film composed of adaptations of three short stories by W. Somerset Maugham: "The Ant and the Grasshopper", directed by Pat Jackson and adapted by T. E. B. Clarke; "Winter Cruise", helmed by Anthony Pelissier, screenplay by Arthur Macrae; "Gigolo and Gigolette", directed by Harold French, written by Eric Ambler. It is the last film in a Maugham trilogy, preceded by Quartet and Trio.

Depressing and realistic family drama about the struggles of unemployment and poverty in 1930s Lancashire. The 20-year-old Kerr gives an emotionally charged performance as Hardcastle, one of the cotton workers trying to make life better. Interlaced with humour that brings a ray of sunshine to the pervasive bleakness, this remains a powerful social study of life between the wars, and was a rare problem picture to come out of Britain at the time.

Yankee charter pilot Morris inadvertently finds himself in the midst of thieves who have purloined a costly antique jade figure from an exhibit. He tracks the thieves to Battersea, where he rescues the fair Germaine from their unsavory clutches, and the Buddha boosters gain only jaded justice.

When a sickly Victorian woman dies suddenly, a postmortem reveals that her body contains a fatal dose of arsenic. Suspicion falls on her husband and her companion, who are lovers. Inspector Martin of Scotland Yard solves the mystery of her death... over a cup of tea.

In this drama, a frustrated upper-class writer decides that he will find real inspiration by examining his subjects first-hand. This leads him to begin wandering about the seamiest side of town where he witnesses a murder. When an innocent man is arrested, the writer refuses to assist him as the knowledge that he has been "slumming" could destroy his career. The young man is sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Adapted from the novel of the same name by Hammond Innes. Bruce Campbell (Dirk Bogarde) inherits "Campbell's Kingdom" in the Canadian Rockies on the death of his grandfather. He has been diagnosed with an unspecified terminal illness and decides to see if he can find the oil that his grandfather believed was present on his land, and to clear his family name; his grandfather had wrongly been found guilty of fraud when his oil exploration company went broke. Owen Morgan (Stanley Baker) is the boss of a company that is constructing a dam that when complete will flood the "Kingdom". It's a race against time to prove that the oil is there before the dam is completed.

The Pickwick Club sends Mr. Pickwick and a group of friends to travel across England and to report back on the interesting things they find...

Melodrama set in Victorian Brighton. Scheming pub landlady uses the timorous son of a domineering pharmacist to assist in the poisoning of her drunkard husband. (The title is from the way pharmacists used to wrap parcels containing poison).

An American insurance investigator is sent to Rhodesia to investigate the mysterious death of a diamond broker who drowned whilst diving off the coast. The broker was insured for $1 million so the insurers are suspicious.

An American doctor, Jethro Jones, comes into a quiet British seaside community and becomes entangled in a murder mystery when the town gossips inform him that all of the three wives of the town doctor, Doctor Dysert (or Doctor Deadcert as they call him) have had mysterious deaths. And now Doctor Dysert is treating his own secretary, Kitty, who he wants to make her his next wife, as she has inexplicably fallen ill.