***SPOILERS*** The most unusual thing about this movie is that the person who's really the center of attraction and the reason all that happens in it someone called Mr.Wills isn't even in the films credits and isn't even, as far as I can see, played by a living person or actor but by a store front mannequin. It's in this bombed out building, during the London Blitz, that we see sailor Chris Lloyd, Dirk Bogarde, together with this six year old runaway little Robbie Campball, Jon Whiteley,just shooting the breeze where in the foreground we see this stiff, Mr. Willis, laying on the ground in the early stages of rigor mortis. How he, Willis, got there and what caused his condition, being dead, were never really told only that Lloyd's wife Megda, Elizabeth Sellars, worked for Willis who was getting a little too friendly with her.
With all that behind us were then shown that Robbie is on the run from his foster parents because in him playing with matches he almost set the house on fire and is afraid that his step-dad Mr. Campbell, Jack Stewart, will beat the living hell out of him when he finds out about it. From then on both Lloyd & Robbie are on the run from the police as well as Mr. Campbell until they reach this seaside town in Scotland and plan to sea-jack a boat and check or sail out to safety in Ireland. It's while on the lamb that Lloyd becomes very attached to Robbie in that he feels that he's in far more trouble then he is. Not having a home to go home to and parents to love him Lloyd who had first had little use for Robbie starts to show real affection towards the little boy.
***SPOILERS*** The love and affection that Lloyd shows for Robbie really hits home when on their way to Ireland Robbie falls deathly ill because of the raw and possibly rotten eggs that Lloyd has been giving him to eat and decides to turn the boat around back to Scotland and eventually face justice in the murder of Wills for reasons were never really given by the films screenwriters. What I couldn't quite understand is why Wills, who seemed to be well off financially, was in that bombed out building in the first place? That unless if Lloyd did murder him had dragged his body there to keep the police from finding it.
With all that behind us were then shown that Robbie is on the run from his foster parents because in him playing with matches he almost set the house on fire and is afraid that his step-dad Mr. Campbell, Jack Stewart, will beat the living hell out of him when he finds out about it. From then on both Lloyd & Robbie are on the run from the police as well as Mr. Campbell until they reach this seaside town in Scotland and plan to sea-jack a boat and check or sail out to safety in Ireland. It's while on the lamb that Lloyd becomes very attached to Robbie in that he feels that he's in far more trouble then he is. Not having a home to go home to and parents to love him Lloyd who had first had little use for Robbie starts to show real affection towards the little boy.
***SPOILERS*** The love and affection that Lloyd shows for Robbie really hits home when on their way to Ireland Robbie falls deathly ill because of the raw and possibly rotten eggs that Lloyd has been giving him to eat and decides to turn the boat around back to Scotland and eventually face justice in the murder of Wills for reasons were never really given by the films screenwriters. What I couldn't quite understand is why Wills, who seemed to be well off financially, was in that bombed out building in the first place? That unless if Lloyd did murder him had dragged his body there to keep the police from finding it.