Ziggy (Mark Lester) is a young boy, probably about eleven, and he lives in a fantasy world. He is constantly making up elaborate stories which he swears are true but of course they aren’t. In other words he’s basically a perfectly normal boy although he’s gifted with a lot of imagination and an unusual facility for telling the most outrageous lies.
Ziggy lives with his big sister Pippa (Susan George) and their grandfather (played by Lionel Jeffries) in a lighthouse on Malta.
Then comes the day when Ziggy’s wild stories catch up with him. A visiting African president is assassinated. Ziggy is an eyewitness to the assassination and the assassins know that he saw them and now they’re after him. He tells all this to Pippa but of course she doesn’t believe a word of it. What makes Ziggy’s story harder to believe is that he insists (quite correctly) that the assassins are policemen.
While watching the visiting president’s motorcade Pippa strikes up an acquaintanceship with a young man named Tom Jones (played by Australian actor Tony Bonner). Or rather he strikes up an acquaintanceship with her. The fact that Pippa is drop-dead gorgeous may well be the reason he was so anxious to get to know her.
The bad guys really are out to kill Ziggy and the difficulty of persuading anyone to believe him is just the beginning of young Ziggy’s troubles. It’s also just the beginning of the nightmare for his grandfather, his sister and Tom. Tom gets mixed up in all this because after driving Pippa home he finds the whole island is under curfew so Ziggy’s grandfather decides that they’ll have to put Tom up for the night.
It’s going to be quite a night. With an extraordinary amount of mayhem and quite a high bodycount as the two murderous cops kill anyone who gets in their way including innocent bystanders. The violence isn’t especially graphic but it’s the casualness with which the bad guys kill people that makes this quite a brutal film. There’s also a notable car chase.
This was director John Hough’s feature film debut. Prior to this he’d worked in television, directing a number of episodes of the final season of The Avengers (the Tara King season). He followed up Eyewitness with the notorious 1971 Hammer film Twins of Evil and the absolutely superb 1973 horror film The Legend of Hell House. With Eyewitness Hough proves himself to be an inspired action movie director.
He has a fine cast to work with. Having recently starred in Oliver! Mark Lester was at this time the biggest child star in Britain and he gives a fine performance as the mischievous but likeable Ziggy. Susan George was on the cusp of stardom. She’s a very underrated actress and she’s terrific and very believable as Pippa, who dearly loves Ziggy although there are times when she could cheerfully strangle him. Lionel Jeffries is excellent as the grandfather and provides a few lighter moments in an otherwise rather grim and brutal film. Tony Bonner is fine as the good-natured Tom. Jeremy Kemp is great as the police chief, a man who is dedicated to the point of fanaticism.
It’s the two villains who really shine, especially Peter Vaughan as the chief bad guy. It’s a bit weird seeing Peter Bowles as a murderous heavy although at this time he dd play the occasional darker rôle, notably in A Magnum for Schneider (the pilot for the superb Callan TV spy series).
The film was shot on location in Malta. This provides an interesting and exotic setting and it has the advantage that Malta is an island - once the authorities have sealed off all sea and air exits both the hunters (the assassins) and the hunted (Ziggy) are trapped together on the island. The location shooting really is splendid. The fact that Ziggy and his family live in a lighthouse is just one more cool touch.
On the audio commentary Hough claims (and having watched the movie I’m inclined to believe him) that there’s not a single process shot in the movie - all the car chase scenes were done for real, filmed as they happened. This gives the action scenes an extraordinary intensity and immediacy.
In fact everything in this visually astonishingly bold film has a sense of urgency and palpable menace.
Kino Lorber have outdone themselves with their DVD release (and they’ve issued this one on Blu-Ray as well). The anamorphic transfer is excellent the extras include two audio commentaries, the first featuring John Hough and Bryan Forbes (who wrote the final version of the screenplay and as head of production of Elstree Studios was the man who gave the movie the green light), the second featuring a couple of film historians.
While the plot might not be dazzlingly original it’s the execution that makes Eyewitness a very much above average action thriller. It really is a well-crafted piece of film-making and it’s very highly recommended.
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