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I don't think I've ever seen a film where almost all of the characters are literally shouting 50% of their dialogue. Ray Milland is probably the worst offender...and since he directed the film himself, that makes it twice as bad! It's not that the acting is "over the top" - that would have been preferable to actors constantly yelling at each other. Sometimes it's warranted - but that's an issue in itself - there are too many scenes that lend themselves to over-emoting. Other ties, the yelling is just plain ridiculous.

Another issue is the facial expressions made by the actors (again, mainly Milland). I believe they are intended to deliberately confuse the viewer, to make the viewer think that the actor is thinking in certain way, when they are not. I'm not sure if it's the actors' fault, the director's fault or a product of the times (late 60s filmmaking ?? - I'm not sure what that really means, but I'm putting it out there anyway).

Watching Ray Milland in a 1940s or 1950s film seemed OK...in "Hostile Witness", I feel like I'm watching him in one of his late career horror films. Not good.

This being said, the film was paced well (a credit to Milland!) and had some neat twists. It kept me watching in spite of its issues.

Enjoyable, entertaining, somewhat stagy film version of play Hostile Witness stars Ray Milland(who also directs) as a barrister who having lost his daughter to a hit-and-run driver vows vengeance on the man responsible. This leads to his eventual arrest under a series of intriguing red herrings and some interesting if not wholly plausible logic. Milland gives a , how shall I put it , a strong - STRONG - performance. He barks out nearly everything he says and looks like he'll pop a vein any minute. He is enjoyable nonetheless. The rest of the cast of British stalwarts make for good viewing as well. Sylvia Syms as a junior barrister is particularly strong as is Geoffrey Lumsden as a provincial older military relic - totally out of step with reality in many ways and very engaging to watch. Hostile Witness is nothing great or profound by any means but makes for a good, old-fashioned courtroom drama/mystery.

"Hostile Witness" is a British film starring Ray Milland, who also directs.

Milland plays an excellent barrister, Simon Crawford, whose daughter is killed in a hit and run accident. Crawford vows that if he finds the person who did it, he will kill him.

Later on, his neighbor is found dead, and Crawford is blamed. He decides to defend himself when his counsel, a young woman (Sylvia Syms) whom he's mentoring, quits in anger.

This is a neat mystery that will really have you guessing up to the denouement, what people are calling here "a Perry Mason moment." Ray Milland shouts his way through this, and I was very aware of his hairpiece. His hair fell out after it was curled for Reap the Wild Wind in 1942. The rest of the acting is fine, particularly from Syms, but Milland has the largest role.

I found this courtroom drama extremely enjoyable for a large number of reasons. I thought that there were excellent performances from the cast but especially the two leading actors Ray Milland and Sylvia Syms. The drama unfolded at an easy to follow pace with a leading barrister (Ray Milland) being accused of killing his neighbour (a high court judge) following the tragic accident which killed his daughter. We follow his trial through many twists and turns with at first his junior (Sylvia Syms) defending him but ending up with him defending himself. As you may expect from such a film, there is an unexpected twist at the end. I have tried for years to find this released on video or DVD but with no success. I consider that this film is good enough for release.

If you like Perry Mason you'll like this film. But not as much. It follows a similar path, where we see some events around the crime but not who the guilty party is. Of course the truth comes out in the end. As the setting is in England, there is much more courtroom decorum, with few objections by the lawyers. Yet we see some classic Perry Mason tactics. My main disappointment though, came when the film had no epilogue. After Perry Mason won his case, he would always have a chat with Della and Paul and explain how he figured it out. You would then slap your brow and wonder how you missed that. But in the film, this doesn't happen, so it's not at all clear how the crime was solved. At least not to me.

1967's "Hostile Witness" was the last of five feature films to be directed by actor Ray Milland, who also starred in each one, dating back to his 1955 Western "A Man Alone" (his best known was AIP's "Panic in Year Zero!" in 1962). The experience of starring in Jack Roffey's successful Broadway play (which he also toured in the US and Australia) led Milland to helm this movie adaptation at London's Shepperton Studios, the stationary camera reminding us of its stage origins yet still engaging with a veteran cast of stalwarts like Felix Aylmer (as the presiding judge), Raymond Huntley (as the prosecutor), Richard Hurndall (as the investigator), and especially Sylvia Syms as Milland's promising young clerk, whose services are sorely missed once he begins to defend himself. His barrister Oliver Crawford is as arrogant as he is confident in his victorious ways, only to see his world come crashing down with the unexpected death of his only daughter, the victim of a hit-and-run right outside his home. After spending three months recovering from the tragedy, the barrister returns to work but is quickly sidetracked by the murder of a trusted friend who is presumed to have been guilty of the crime, circumstantial evidence pointing to Crawford as the guilty party. At this point we never leave the courtroom, and the viewer cannot be certain if a nervous breakdown could be responsible for turning Crawford into an undeniable killer. Milland acquits himself well though the story tends to bog down near the end of its 102 minutes, his screen career only picking up again three years later as Ryan O'Neal's stern father in the hugely successful "Love Story."

"Hostile Witness" is one of those grand, old fashioned British courtroom dramas that can be lots of fun. Fun, but dangerous when it comes to the telling because the 'buy in' as to who did what and why needs at least a little bit of believability, something sadly missing in action here.

Briefly, barrister Ray Milland is accused of murdering an old judge he had accused of running down and killing his daughter. Hitting him extremely hard, he has a mental breakdown followed by a three month convalescence after which he is 'cured.' But returning to work does not necessarily mean putting the past behind him and getting on with life because Milland is arrested and committed to trial. The barrister is now in the dock, and he isn't handling it very well. Let the games begin!

When I first saw "Hostile Witness" on the stage of the Music Box Theatre in New York in 1966, I quite liked it even though I quibbled that some of the actors in general 'and Ray Milland in particular tended to speak too quickly, making themselves a little difficult at times to understand.' Unfortunately things have gone from bad to worse with the screen version, a film that first showed up on United Artist's release schedule in 1968 but was never seen. Little wonder as "Hostile Witness" comes across as a poorly constructed artifact from a bygone era. Thundering and screaming and yelling and bulldozing its way to its laughable conclusion, it is just so out of touch with 1968, which is probably why it never got a North American release. Now its 'old-fashionedness' would probably be okay if the film had been a 'period piece.' But it wasn't. It was ostensibly set in 'modern London.' So why aren't there any references to London's many mod' characters, swinging Carnaby Street, The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?

I wish I could like "Hostile Witness" because I love British courtroom dramas. But courtroom dramas that make a modicum of sense, contain some colourful characters and have punctuated shading in pace and performances. Again, missing in action all!

Ray Milland, when tightly reigned in by A-list directors like Fritz Lang, John Farrow, Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock can be amazingly effective. But left to his own excesses and he is not only insufferable, but as the film's director he also ensures that so also are many of those around him. Only Sylvia Miles, Norman Barrs, Felix Aylmer and Julian Holloway manage to rise above their material, and even here the results are decidedly mixed.

(Flash Review)

A father's daughter is killed, the father has a mental breakdown and then a man turns up dead who may have a link to the daughter's death. Now the father is being accused of murder! That's a bummer scenario for a grieving father. Will he be found innocent or guilty and double his sorrow? At its core, this is a trial movie. The script is brisk, has some catchy dialog zingers and the story is substantial enough to hold one's attention. Nothing special but better than expected.

Hostile Witness (1968)

When Hollywood was shifting to a new mode of movie-making, Britain was apparently still able to make what you might call a routine, early 1960s styled film. And no wonder, with old school Ray Milland as both leading actor and director. It's a modern England, including some terrific Mod fashion on the women (and nice suits on the men, to be fair). But this is a relatively stiff affair, and for a 1968 film, rather old fashioned, pleasurable and unexceptional.

It's worth adding, quickly, that this is a dull film cinematically, too. It's widescreen of course (not a made for television movie) but it's lighted as if for t.v. (low contrast ratio) and the camera is functional, rarely or never an active presence, or even a creative one. This I blame on Milland as much as the cinematographer. It frankly kills even the best scenes, which are blasted with light in an unrealistic and dulling way. Sad. But if you know Milland, who can sometimes be interesting (if never exciting), it makes sense--he's a stiff, snotty type, at least on screen.

But he's not a bad actor, and if there is one consistent strength, in acting, it's actually the director. Which is fair enough. And there is the plot, which I think is supposed to sustain us, even if it's doled out painfully slowly. The curiosity is the sudden death of what might have seemed a potential main character, the beautiful (and well dressed) daughter of the leading man, high powered lawyer Simon Crawford (Milland). You get the sense in this film (more than his few others he directed) that he is aware of Hitchcock's later films (post-Psycho era). As a fellow Brit (Milland was Welsh), there was a commiseration, no doubt (same era, same sense of drama within a relatively false presentation). And as a crime film replete with ordinary folk overwhelmed by terrible facts.

But as a director, Milland is no Hitchcock, which they probably both realized in the rather terrific "Dial M for Murder" which was directed by one master and acted by the other (in one of his best performances). The plot, the strength of the movie, is laid out mostly through drawing room (or law office) conversations. It's slow going, if somewhat rigorous in logic. Milland's stiffness is better suited to the second half of the movie, where he is in the formality of the courtroom. In the end, this is a courtroom drama, with all its argument-based back and forth. The logic is stretched by the end however, with a showdown of shouting convictions and then a last minute surprise (the last ten seconds of the movie) and it's almost laughable.

There are so many better movies, I'd skip this one. To say it's solid on some old-fashioned level isn't really a defense. There's little here to lift it up, very little.

I am not that big a fan of courtroom drama but quite enjoyed this one, probably because of the decent cast, especially Milland in the lead. I see that it is based on a Broadway play but is transposed to London. I suppose British courts have a more pictorial value in the gowns and wigs than do American courts. Talkng of wigs, though, the one adorning Milland's head when out if court is no more real-looking than the lawyer's wig he wears in court !

A solid enough courtroom drama from the tail end of the 1960s; I can see why it flopped, as it's very old-fashioned and belongs at least a decade or two previously. Saying that it's a lively little thing in which Ray Milland plays a barrister who suffers a bereavement before being accused of a crime himself. A good little cast here and a story that keeps you guessing, with a fun and traditional twist ending. Not bad.

Clearly, the co-stars here are Sylvia Syms, as "Miss Larkin", and Ray Milland, as "Simon Crawford". Crawford is accused of knocking off the supposed murderer of his daughter, and Miss Larkin is determined to defend him. Has he been framed? A majority of the film shows us the workings of the British courts, based on a play Milland had performed himself. Apparently, and sadly, he probably should have left the directing to someone else, as it did not go over as well as the play had. This seems to be the only film project that Milland and Syms had done together, and like most film actors, they both ended their careers with TV appearances on shows like Columbo and Love Boat. This one kind of plods along. No real twists or surprises. The repeated performances by Milland must have taken their toll... in several instances, he gives a rote performance, and doesn't seem to be experiencing what he is going through, and is reciting the lines without the emotion. Story by Jack Roffey. It's not so bad... it's pretty good. For a much better version of this, watch "Witness for the Prosecution", with Laughton and Dietrich. That one has a clever script, and the performances are better all around.

Ray Milland is the consummate stuffed shirt, arrogant presence. Here he plays a barrister who seems to get guilty people off by digging up technicalities. He mistreats his colleagues, but mostly through indifference toward their hard work. One day, his pretty young daughter is run over be a hit-and-run driver. It drops him into depression, unleashing intense anger. At one point, he accuses a judge of being the culprit (which he is not). Milland comes home and is struck on the head. While being cared for, the aforementioned judge is stabbed. Because of his previous threats, a case against Milland is made and he is arrested. Choosing to defend himself, he has little evidence, and it doesn't look good. He finally realizes that the people he had so little regard for are his possible salvation. The story is flat and contrived and really lacks suspense.

For some reason everybody in this film is shouting at one another.Millands acting and directing are as dodgy as his wig.The denoument in court in court is quite preposterous.They should have filmed in black and white,cut it down to an hour and brought in Edgar Lustgarten.

I have to admit, I am a fan of Ray Milland, especially when he plays a gruff, arrogant character, which he does with gusto here. He also directed and started in the stage version of the film, so this project was obviously close to his heart.

The film does go off on an odd tangent every so often, but the story remains unpredictable and has a fairly satisfying ending. And there is the bonus of Sylvia Sim, the great Felix Aylmer playing the judge and Ballard Berkeley featuring as clerk of the court in his pre-Fawlty Towers days.

Perhaps not the best film ever made, but enjoyable and well worth a watch.

Ray Milland stars in both the screen and Broadway stage version of Hostile Witness. In 1966 it had a 156 performance run on Broadway and besides Milland, Lumsden Hare and Norman Barrs repeat their roles from the original cast.

Milland is cast as a prominent London barrister who suffers the loss of his daughter in a hit and run accident. After that he suffers a mental breakdown and upon his discharge a judge who was a neighbor whom he was informed was the driver is killed and Milland arrested for the crime.

Milland may have a brilliant legal mind, but he's a bully and a male chauvinist. He asks that Sylvia Sims from his office defend and then proceeds to sabotage her work by questioning her judgment. Proof of the adage about a lawyer defending himself has a fool for a client.

Of course he's innocent but the explanation is one that was way too contrived to be believable. Author Jack Roffey who adapted his own play for the screen must have consulted Erle Stanley Gardner.

I think if it were written today it would have been Sims who pulled Milland out of the jackpot. I might have liked it better because Milland's character isn't very likable. No great rooting interest to see him triumph.

Still fans of courtroom dramas will find this entertaining.

What the movie "Hostile Witness" is is basically an episode of the television show "Perry Mason", though filmed in color and having a feature length running time. Actually, it's based on a stage play by Jack Roffey, who also wrote this movie's screenplay. The stage origins of this movie are pretty clear; most of the movie takes place in a courtroom. But that wasn't a real concern to me, since I enjoy plays as well as movies. Though while this play turned movie can't be considered awful or bad, it all the same feels like familiar stuff. While there is the novelty of it taking place in England, otherwise you will have seen this kind of story done many times before. If you can't get enough of "Perry Mason" or similar courthouse movies and TV shows, you will probably enjoy this. Otherwise, most likely you'll find this particular telling unexceptional.