Hostile Witness

"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.

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.

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.

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 !

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.