Steinesongo Too many fans seem to be blown away

GetPapa Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Darkling_Zeist This is an absolute gem, and why this masterful chiller remains so obscure is beyond me! 'Unmann Wittering & Zigo' is masterfully directed by John Mackenzie, with truly chilling performances from a sublime young cast and yet another stand-out performance from the ever-genius David Hemmings. This profoundly disturbing film can sit quite uncomfortably alongside 'village of the damned' & 'the wicker man' as one of British cinema's all-time great horror films. A razor-edged shocker with a palpably disturbing atmosphere; as this genuinely creepy film unfolds, director, Mackenzie ratchets up the penetrating unease with consummate skill; including a number of genuinely terrifying sequences (The ICA or NFT really should give this masterpiece a screening) Highly recommended.

jw1234 I have been scratching my head for years trying to remember the name of this brilliant film and now I have found it. It definitely deserves another outing, I saw it years ago, it scared me witless then but I would love to see it again.It reminded my of my days at boarding school although thankfully not quite so gruesome.The pace of the terror is kept up throughout the film and I have kept an eye out for it hoping that one day it will be shown again.It has not happened yet but maybe one day someone will dig it out of the vaults dust it off and give it another showing. It is an extremely well made film.Very well worth watching and I give it my own rating of 100 out 10 !!! It has been made the way "terror films" ought to be made, in the style of "Hammer Films" and "House Of Horror".Incidentally Roy Skeggs, who produced the "Hammer House of Horror" films in the 1980's later went on to buy the remains of the original defunct production company.

The_Void Unman, Wittering and Zigo is largely unknown little film, and that isn't really surprising considering that it's really rather odd. It's not a bad film, however, and certainly is ripe for rediscovery. The film is along the same lines as Lindsay Anderson's 1968 masterpiece "If..." as it focuses on a rebellious group of boys at a posh school. The film is based on a play by Giles Cooper and that is always evident as we focus on just a handful of small locations and everything is centred on the main plot line. We focus on John Ebony, a young and idealistic teacher who takes a job an English school and is put in charge of a class of boys, leaving his wife at home in the cottage provided for them. He is given the job because of a tragic accident which resulted in the previous teacher of the class falling off a cliff to his death. It's not long before it becomes apparent that the class is not made up of 'normal' boys, and this becomes even more the case when the new teacher is told by the boys that they murdered the old one! John soon starts to fear for his life...The best thing about this film is the way it's plotted. We are given the mystery on a plate at the start of the film and the rest of it focuses on working out whether or not what the boys told their teacher is true. Director John Mackenzie skilfully handles the main plot theme and Unman, Wittering and Zigo becomes more thrilling with every turn. The plot is relaxed in the way that it plays out, but the director keeps things interesting by ensuring that the mystery is always intriguing and the tension just bubbles beneath the surface. The film benefits from an excellent ensemble cast which is lead by the great David Hemmings who is backed up by a good cast of youngsters. The atmosphere in this film is great and is partly created by the way that the boys interact with one another. One of the most striking things about this film is the way that they talk in unison and that in itself helps to build up a feeling of dread emanating from how it shows us what the central character is up against. Overall, Unman, Wittering and Zigo may be slightly lacking in some areas (the ending is not particularly strong and the story sometimes lacks direction) but these are not big faults in what is otherwise an excellent slice of cult cinema!

simon-118 A forgotten gem, this is one of the earliest films John Mackenzie directed after a few years working in television, before he returned to television in time to shoot some of the finest Play For Todays of the 1970s. And along with The Long Good Friday and Ruby this is Mackenzie finest achievement in the cinema. A stunning thriller, this is an assured, efficient filming of a chilly concept. David Hemmings is excellently vulnerable in the lead, the perfect Hitchcockian hero, believed by nobody apart from the viewer. The class of boys includes a young Michael Kitchen, and there's Tony haygarth as a world weary colleague whose lack of joie de vivre begins to corrupt Hemmings as much as his class do.The most frightening sequence is the shocking persecution of the wife in the squash courts, a superbly staged scene that is quite a jaw-dropper considering the age of the film. In fact it is more the quaint English setting that adds the real shyock to the scene. It is interesting to compare this film with two other public school movies of the era, inevitably Lindsay Anderson's If....but more significantly the brilliant Walk A Crooked Pathwhich similarly portrays the public school boys as corrupt, ruthless and cold blooded, brilliantly adept at money making, no matter how immorally, and trained to view the world with a haughty authority.Unman Wittering And Zigo is a truly gripping thriller, and proves Mackenzie is a great thriller maker as he illustrated in pieces like Dennis Potter's Double Dare and The Long Good Friday even more vividly.