"Do you know what this is?" asks the cook at the Little People's Garden School as she ladles a white liquid into bowl after bowl. "Why, it looks like junket," says Ann Lake, who arrived minutes before to deliver her little girl, Bunny, to the nursery school. "It not only looks like junket, it is junket...junket is junket. And no matter what you do with it, it still tastes like swill and swallows like slime."

This exchange is one of the many pleasures of Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing...a movie made up of a collection of eccentric and creepy performances, dialogue by John and Penelope Mortimer which is unexpectedly witty, an atmosphere of foreboding and dread, photography that keeps us in the mood for the worst to happen, and a steady performance at the heart of the film by Lawrence Olivier as Superintendent Newhouse,

Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) has arrived in London to join her older brother, Stephen (Keir Dullea). She takes her little girl to the Little People's Garden School, but when she returns for her in the afternoon there is no trace that Bunny was ever there. In the course of the next several hours, Ann will become both distraught and determined. Her brother will forcefully try to help her. Superintendent Newhouse will need to seriously consider whether or not there ever was a Bunny Lake...and except for the last twenty minutes or so, we'll have a fine time.

The unfortunate aspect of the movie is that it falls apart at the end and that two of the three main players aren't quite up to the demands of their characters. Both Lynley and Dullea give it all they've got. Lynley, in particular, comes close. Dullea, on the other hand, also tries but he has finely wrought weirdo written all over his face. Still, one man's weirdo is another man's psychiatrist. Without Olivier providing a subtle and compelling performance as a middle-aged copper who is shrewd, indirect, amusing at times and prepared to be skeptical, we'd be left with only a shell of a psycho-suspense thriller. Olivier grounds the movie. "You must think I'm a terrible mother, leaving her that way," Lynley says to Olivier. "No, Mrs. Lake," he replies, "I don't know anything about you yet." Unfortunately, when at last the film shows us what's going on, we've long guessed the situation. At that point the air goes out of the balloon and we're left with a murderous psychiatric breakdown which is almost embarrassing in being so over the top.

But in the meantime, the pleasures of Bunny Lake Is Missing are worth savoring, starting with the remarkable group of supporting players Preminger gathered. Noel Coward plays Horatio Wilson, Lynley's landlord, who shows up at unexpected times looking like a poorly preserved, ancient turtle. Wilson is a leering, amusing, alcoholic, tottering old degenerate who favors heavy sweaters and loves his Chihuahua. He recites on the BBC. Coward's enunciation of "Hello...we've come back...from wettest...Worcestershire" is a delight. His self-amused attempt to interest two policemen in his collection of whips has to rank among the movies' great cameo performances. "You ever hear him recite poetry?" Olivier asks Lynley. "It's like a Welsh parson gargling in molasses."

Martita Hunt, so wonderful as Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, plays with equal and wonderful skill Miss Ada Ford, the long-retired co-founder of the Little People's Garden School. She lives in private quarters above the school, spending her time at her desk making notes and listening to the recordings she made of children describing their nightmares. She's an odd bird, but observant. The scenes Hunt shares with Olivier are highlights of the movie.

Finlay Currie is an aged doll maker who calls the dolls his children. When he fixes them from his wheelchair, his assistant places them in the recovery room, downstairs where a lamp is needed to see anything. Anna Massey, a terrific actor, is Elvira Smollett, who runs the school, and is at various times defensive, condescending, harried, tearful and irritated.

The first two-thirds of Bunny Lake Is Missing is so good that it's worth watching and rewatching despite the last third. A movie as witty and foreboding as this -- Superintendent Newhouse turns out to be a great fan of junket -- needs to be enjoyed for all the odd pleasures it offers.