The Double McGuffin

Some schoolchildren come across a briefcase full of money. When they go back for it, there is a body in its place. When they bring the police, neither the case nor the body is there and nobody believes them. In time they work out that both were part of a plot to assassinate someone, and they have to find a way to stop it themselves. The film builds the thriller mould around child heroes and uses adults not believing a child as the main obstacle. The account puts curiosity forward rather than fear; the children treat the danger like a game, and the film ends up on their side. Ernest Borgnine and George Kennedy appear in Joe Camp’s hundred and one minute American film, completed in 1979.