SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS

I recently met and spoke with a charming elderly actor, Rodney Paulden.

 Among many roles over a long career, as a youngster Rodney had played the character of Munn - pictured - in the obscure 1971 school thriller called Unman, Wittering and Zigo. The main draw of the flick was its star, the ever-hip David Hemmings, he of Blow Up fame.

Unman, W and Zigo is a strange Lord of the Flies-esque affair. 

I managed to find the second half on Daily Motion. 

It appears to be part of that gaggle of films in the Sixties and Seventies exploring secret and deadly goings on in boys' boarding schools. I guess the sub-genre's poster-boy was Malcolm McDowell's Mick Travis, the gun-toting rebel rouser in If [1968].

Unman is no exception and its particular paranoia centres on the pupils' woodland murder of a teacher and the subsequent oppression of his successor, Hemmings and his wife. Ultimately tragic, I found this rather grim tale or at least the second half a difficult watch. Posh, feral, murderous schoolkids are an acquired taste.

Unman, Wittering and Zigo reminded me of another school thriller I caught one late night this year, Child's Play made in 1972.

Child's Play, not to be confused with the Eighties doll slasher of the same name, is a brooding crucible of madness with James Mason's ultra-stiff and aging Latin teacher bristling with a tangible hatred for Beau Bridge's young and cool English teacher. 

Oddly classed as a horror film, there appears to be an even darker force at work in the school but I fell asleep a third way through! Child's Play remains a mystery to me really and I should catch up at some point.

Have you seen any of these films readers?