Eight Witnesses

"Eight Witnesses" is a misleading title, as the eight witnesses don't provide much help and are in only one scene in the picture. They are in the Braille room at a library in Vienna when a fugitive scientific genius pops in. The predictable happens, and thereby hangs an overrated tale.

The scientist was carrying an undisclosed document, which immediately goes missing and which the good guys and bad guys are looking for. And so, time is spent and time is filled to pad this semi-interesting film out to a presentable length. One of the few bright spots is suave Dennis Price, with his marvelous speaking voice, who is one of the good guys. Peggy Ann Garner is the daughter of the scientist but seems disinterested in the proceedings (must be catching, because I felt the same way).

This picture is not a 'must see' for any movie fan. I guess if a friend presents you with a copy you would have an excuse to watch it, but then you would have to question whether he knows what a good movie is.

"Eight Witnesses" is a film in the public domain and after seeing how dull and cheap it was, I think I can understand why no one bothered to renew the copyright on this one! The film is a Cold War thriller about spies and communism (though oddly communism or the Soviets are NEVER mentioned). This stuff sure should have been tense and exciting...but it wasn't.

When the film begins, Dr. Ernst Hildebrandt has escaped from this captors behind the Iron Curtain. However, oddly, he hasn't yet turned up in the West. Eventually he does show--but only briefly to his daughter. Then, he quickly disappears and his body is found in a library. However, the witnesses to his murder are an odd lot--they are all blind. Using these witnesses, his strange daughter and intuition, an agent tries to piece events together. After all, the professor was supposed to be carrying important documents on him and they were not found on the body. And, the killers are apparently still looking for them. Eventually, the papers are recovered...but by then, you really don't care!

As I said, the film is very low energy (the actors NEVER seem emotional or real), dull, has uninteresting characters and has a musical score that is cheap and doesn't fit the movie. In fact, I'd swear it's recycled as often it his inappropriate crescendos and seemed a bit random and over-done. Additionally, Peggy Ann Gardner was a poor choice to play the daughter, as she was supposedly from the same country as her father had an American accent--yet his was very pronounced and sounded like he was from central Europe. How could you possibly make a spy movie involving a murder THIS dull?!

The spy/mystery movie "Eight Witnesses" is not bad as light entertainment, but it is based on an interesting plot idea that is never fully developed. It ends up being a fairly fast-paced but rather routine feature that could have been better.

The story starts with the murder of a scientist carrying important information, with only a group of blind persons as potential witnesses. It's an interesting premise, but after one scene in which the witnesses are questioned, it moves on to more routine material.

What follows is nothing exceptional, but it does move pretty quickly, and it is not very long. Dennis Price and Peggy Ann Garner, as the two leads, work all right together. If you like mysteries or spy stories, "Eight Witnesses" probably has just enough to be worth a look.

The movie is sold with the premise that a murder occurs in front of eight witnesses but all of them are blind, however this is not really a murder mystery rather its an espionage thriller, and a damn good one at that.

The plot of this Cold War movie is that a scientist with knowledge of a secret formula escapes to the West from a "Soviet" lab. He calls a British agent for a pick up but before that can happen he is spooked by two men waiting to use a pay phone and runs off. He flees to where his daughter works, a library for the blind, however before she can go off with him, he is killed in front of several blind witnesses. The film film then becomes a quest to catch the killer and to recover some papers that he was carrying.

This is not a real murder mystery. We know who the killer is from the outset, the real question is who will get the papers that have been hidden in the library. Its a tense little movie that is unremarkable in most ways except that it is highly entertaining. You really do wonder what is going to happen to are hero (the British agent) and heroine (the scientist's daughter). Will the romance, begun by the agent as a means of keeping tabs on the girl, survive the strain of the chase? You probably know the answers already, but you'll still watch this all the way to the end to find out because the little twists of plot and German scenery make this something above the normal run of the mill.

I really liked this movie. It took a shop worn tale and dressed it up nicely and made itself into a small little guilty pleasure.

Definitely worth looking for, especially on the budget priced DVD that was just released.

8 out of 10.

A Fairly good start for this spy thriller but later part was rather unimaginative and felt like Routine lines.... Eight Blind witnesses should get more focus imo.... Not Bad film if you are a fan of Classic Crime films from British Cinema....