Unman, Wittering and Zigo (film)

Unman, Wittering and Zigo is a 1971 British thriller film directed by John Mackenzie and starring David Hemmings, Douglas Wilmer and Carolyn Seymour.[1] It is adapted by Simon Raven from Giles Cooper's 1958 radio drama Unman, Wittering and Zigo.[2]

Unman, Wittering and Zigo
Original theatrical poster
Directed byJohn Mackenzie
Produced byGareth Wigan
Written bySimon Raven
Based onplay by Giles Cooper
StarringDavid Hemmings
Douglas Wilmer
Carolyn Seymour
Hamilton Dyce
Music byMichael J. Lewis
CinematographyGeoffrey Unsworth
Edited byFergus McDonell
Production
company
Mediaarts
Distributed byParamount
Release date
1971
Running time
100 mins
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

The movie's title was parodied in Little Britain, and by Rowan Atkinson in a very well-received sketch for one of the early Secret Policeman's Ball concerts for Amnesty International. [3]

Premise

A new teacher arrives at a school and begins to suspect his predecessor was murdered by the pupils, though his suspicions are written off as paranoia. He sets out to prevent the same fate from befalling him.

Cast

Production

The radio play was adapted for BBC TV in 1965.[4]

Film rights were bought by Mediarts, a new company established in London and Hollywood. It was to be the first of four pictures from the company, the others being the directorial debut of Frederic Raphael, a screenplay by Dory Previn and a script by Odie Hawkins.[5] Paramount agreed to distribute.[6]

Filming began in August 1970.[7]

The film was set in Cornwall. Some outdoor scenes were filmed in Llandudno, Wales, but others and interior scenes were mostly filmed in the buildings of Reading Blue Coat School, Sonning, Berkshire, using some of its pupils as extras during the summer holidays.[8]

David Hemmings made the film without telling Hemdale, the company who had exclusive call on his services. This led to a lawsuit.[9]

Critical reception

The BFI's Screenonline called it "a finely wrought psychological suspense drama."[10]

Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide rates the film three stars, calling it, "[A] nifty little sleeper...creepy, chilling mystery, loaded with twists..."<ref>[[Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780452289789%7Curl-access=registration%7Cpage=1476|quote=unman, wittering & zigo 1971.

gollark: There are some other !!FUN!! issues here which I think organizations like the FSF have spent some time considering. Consider something like Android. Android is in fact open source, and the GPL obligates companies to release the source code to modified kernels and such; in theory, you can download the Android repos and device-specific ones, compile it, and flash it to your device. How cool and good™!Unfortunately, it doesn't actually work this way. Not only is Android a horrible multiple-tens-of-gigabytes monolith which takes ages to compile (due to the monolithic system image design), but for "security" some devices won't actually let you unlock the bootloader and flash your image.
gollark: The big one *now* is SaaS, where you don't get the software *at all* but remote access to some on their servers.
gollark: I think this is a reasonable way to do copyright in general; some (much shorter than now!) length where you get exclusivity, which can be extended somewhat if you give the copyright office the source to release at the end of this perioid.
gollark: This isn't really "repair"y, inasmuch as you can't fix it if it breaks unless you happen to be really good at reverse engineering.
gollark: Maybe what you mean is banning DRM-ish things, so you can definitely copy the program and run it elsewhere and such?

References
  1. "Unman, Wittering and Zigo (1972)". BFI.
  2. UNMAN, WITTERING AND ZIGO Monthly Film Bulletin; London Vol. 38, Iss. 444, (Jan 1, 1971): 206.
  3. Horan, Tom (29 January 2010). "Dicks, Cox and Purves: how I feel your pain" – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
  4. "Theatre 625: Unman, Wittering, and Zigo". 27 June 1965. p. 19 – via BBC Genome.
  5. Mediarts Tells Plans for 4 Films Los Angeles Times 20 Aug 1970: e15.
  6. Paramount to Release 10 Features Los Angeles Times 22 Feb 1971: h15.
  7. Victoria Racimo Gets a Top 'Red Sky' Role Martin, Betty. Los Angeles Times 10 Aug 1970: e15.
  8. "Reel Streets". www.reelstreets.com. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
  9. Management split at Hemdale Lindsay, Vincent. The Guardian 8 Aug 1970: 10.
  10. "BFI Screenonline: Mackenzie, John (1932-2011) Biography". www.screenonline.org.uk.


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