Unman, Wittering and Zigo (film)
1971 film by John Mackenzie
Unman, Wittering and Zigo is a 1971 British thriller film directed by John Mackenzie and starring David Hemmings, Douglas Wilmer and Carolyn Seymour. It was adapted by Simon Raven from Giles Cooper's 1958 BBC Radio 3 radio drama Unman, Wittering and Zigo.
The movie's title was parodied in Little Britain (Series 1 Episode 6, 2003), and by a Rowan Atkinson sketch in the 1979 Secret Policeman's Ball concert for Amnesty International.
Plot
New teacher John Ebony 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
The closing credits also list Zigo (who never appears in the film) as "absent".
Production
Development
The radio play was adapted for BBC TV in 1965. Film rights were bought by Mediarts, a new company established in London and Hollywood in 1969 by Gareth Wigan, Richard Gregson and Alan Livingston. Unman was to be the first of four pictures from the company, the others being the directorial debut of Frederic Raphael, a screenplay (On My Way to Where) by Dory Previn and a script by Odie Hawkins. Unman was the company's only film.
The public source identifies “Unman, Wittering and Zigo (film)” as 1971 film by John Mackenzie. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Unman, Wittering and Zigo.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7886755. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 1958, 2003 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Unman, Wittering and Zigo (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.