The best Mervyn Johns’s movies

In 1841, young Ishmael signs up for service abroad the Pequod, a whaler sailing out of New Bedford. The ship is under the command of Captain Ahab, a strict disciplinarian who exhorts his men to find Moby Dick, the great white whale. Ahab lost his his leg to that creature and is desperate for revenge. As the crew soon learns, he will stop at nothing to gain satisfaction.

A shower of meteorites produces a rare night time spectacle that blinds anyone that looks at it. As it was such a beautiful sight, most people were watching, and as a consequence, 99% of the World's population go completely blind. In the original novel, this chaos results in the escape of Triffids: farmed plants harvested for their oils, which are capable of moving themselves around and are carnivorous. In this film version, however, the Triffids are not indigenous plants. Instead they are space aliens whose spores have arrived in this and an earlier meteor shower. Derided by the original novel's author, John Wyndham, for straying so far away from the source material.

Ebenezer Scrooge malcontentedly shuffles through life as a cruel miserly businessman until one fateful Christmas Eve when he is visited by three spirits, sent show him how his unhappy childhood and maladaptive adult behavior over has let him a selfish, lonely, bitter old man.

Set in German-occupied Norway, resistance fighter Knut Straud enlists the reluctant physicist Rolf Pedersen in an effort to destroy the German heavy water production plant in rural Telemark.

In coastal Cornwall, England, during the early 19th Century, a young woman who's come there to visit her aunt, discovers that she's married an inkeeper who's a member of a gang of criminals who arrange shipwrecking and murder for profit.

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.

In a totalitarian future society, a man whose daily work is rewriting history tries to rebel by falling in love.

Somerset Maugham introduces four of his tales in this anthology film: "The Facts of Life," "The Alien Corn," "The Kite," and "The Colonel's Lady."

A tale of life on board a Royal Navy cruiser assigned to protect the vital convoys between America and England during WWII.

A group of travellers, each with a personal problem that they want to hide, arrive at a mysterious Welsh country inn. There is a certain strangeness in the air as they are greeted by the innkeeper and his daughter. Why are all the newspapers a year old? And why doesn't Gwyneth seem to cast a shadow?

In a small New England town during the American War of Independence, Dick Dudgeon, a revolutionary American Puritan, is mistaken for local minister Rev. Anthony Anderson and arrested by the British. Dick discovers himself incapable of accusing another human to suffer and continues to masquerade as the reverend.

The quiet village of Bramley End is taken over by German troops posing as Royal Engineers. Their task is to disrupt England's radar network in preparation for a full scale German invasion. Once the villagers discover the true identity of the troops, they do whatever they can to thwart the Nazis plans.

A detective gets involved with a wealthy socialite who can't seem to stop hiccuping.

Now old, ill, poor, and largely forgotten, William Freise-Greene was once very different. As young and handsome William Green he changed his name to include his first wife's so that it sounded more impressive for the photographic portrait work he was so good at. But he was also an inventor and his search for a way to project moving pictures became an obsession that ultimately changed the life of all those he loved.

Anthony Hancock gives up his office job to become an abstract artist. He has a lot of enthusiasm, but little talent, and critics scorn his work. Nevertheless, he impresses an emerging very talented artist. Hancock proceeds to con the art world into thinking he is a genius.

In Shakespeare's classic play, the Montagues and Capulets, two families of Renaissance Italy, have hated each other for years, but the son of one family and the daughter of the other fall desperately in love and secretly marry.

Scottish highlander Jamie Durie falls into a life of piracy after joining the failed rebellion of Bonnie Prince Charlie against the British crown.

Based on real events, this historical drama is set in 19th-century Ireland, when poverty-stricken tenants dispossessed by greedy landowner Capt. Boycott (Cecil Parker) band together to assert their rights. Patriotic farmer Hugh Davin (Stewart Granger) leads the rebels. Choosing nonviolent resistance, the villagers ostracize their nemesis, who squanders his fortune to repair his ruined reputation and wagers what's left on a horse race.

An American car salesman in London becomes mixed up in a series of fatal occurrences at a secluded mansion.