The Double McGuffin

At a quiet train station, a seasoned mercenary hands a driver a mysterious briefcase destined for the St. Moritz hotel, but the package slips from the car’s cargo and winds up in the woods. In tandem, a sniper upstairs at the hotel targets a woman but the attempt ends in a miss, leaving a sense of danger hovering over the city.

The next night, four boarding-school friends—Specks, Homer [Greg Hodges], Billy Ray, and Foster—slip out of their dorm to swim in a pond near the surrounding woods. Their mischief is a recurring thorn in the side of Police Chief Arnold Talasek [George Kennedy], who is perpetually irritated by their antics. He threatens to report them to their football coach and pull them from the big game, but Specks manages to coax him into letting them play, softening his rough stance just enough to send them back to their dorm with a tempered smile.

The following morning, Homer bravely asks a girl named Jody [Lisa Whelchel] to come into the woods for a chat, and he pours out a confession of love—only to be playfully brushed off, with a reminder to focus on geometry lessons. Soon after, Homer discovers the briefcase again, and inside lies a haunch of money that shimmers with possibility. He stashes the case in a culvert and races to tell his friends. When the group returns to investigate the site, they stumble upon a corpse where the case should be, prompting them to alert Talasek. Yet the chief balks, doubting the boys’ tale because of their checkered history. After a tense wait, the body vanishes, leaving more questions than answers.

The intrigue deepens when the boys and Jody cross paths with a man named Firat [Ernest Borgnine] at a nearby phone booth, who ends up with the severed goods of the case. Specks and Jody momentarily distract Firat with a survey, while Homer and Foster slip away with the briefcase to bring it to Talasek. Firat reappears, and Talasek insists on opening the case, only to find underwear where the money should be. The scene widens the danger: Firat and the limousine-woman’s circle are watching, and the pair of boys notice that the briefcase’s contents have shifted yet again, even as a severed hand is discovered near the culvert.

The next morning reveals a new thread: Billy Ray shadows Firat to a bar at the Hotel Bonnieux, where the mercenaries mingle with the locals. The rest of the boys arrive, and Billy Ray teams up with Homer to pry deeper into Firat’s room while Specks and Foster hold the perimeters. A clever ruse involves a planter concealing a transceiver, and the boys’ quick thinking prevents Firat’s gang from overhearing critical plans. The room’s trunk, heavy with firearms, is found by the intrepid trio, but when Firat and his men close in, a bottle of alcohol is spilled on the device, muffling the crucial whispers.

Determined to stop the murder plot, the students enlist the help of Jody and a computer-savvy classmate, Arthur Honeycutt [Michael Gerard], despite an old feud with Homer. Foster creates chaos by triggering a fire alarm, and Jody captures photographic evidence of the operatives. The boys then break into the police station after hours to print criminal records of the assassins, uncovering a startling clue: Firat is an illegal immigrant from Kaboor, a country with a fragile democracy. A deeper search uncovers the name Michelle Carter, connecting her to the limousine woman, and the revelation that Madame Kura [Elke Sommer], the Kabooran prime minister, is linked to the plot. The plan, it seems, is to assassinate Kura and topple Kaboor’s fledgling democracy, replacing it with dictatorship.

With dawn breaking, Billy Ray and Arthur rush to Carter’s school to warn Kura and persuade her to go to the police station to learn about the threat. Firat, however, keeps pace with a limousine, forming a chase that pushes the kids to improvise and improvise again. In a daring move, they dump the newly found files to buy time; yet the danger remains close. A second fire alarm distracts the assassins, while Specks and Homer sneak into Firat’s hotel room to search for more evidence, and Arthur guides Talasek toward the hotel to confront the danger head-on. When Talasek and Arthur arrive, they discover the trunk emptied of its weapons—the trap is nearly closed.

The turning point arrives as the boys and Talasek team up to outsmart the conspirators. Specks crafts a bold deception that tricks Talasek into believing Firat has kidnapped the pair, and the chief acts on impulse, arresting the assassins in a swift, decisive moment. The room’s veracity is tested, but the trick works, and the evidence—carefully assembled by the students—lands in Talasek’s hands. With the files handed over and the plan exposed, the chief’s trust in the young investigators deepens, and the group parts ways, their teamwork a quiet victory amid a web of political intrigue.

Throughout the ordeal, the film threads together themes of courage, curiosity, and the stubborn resolve of ordinary students against a shadowy conspiracy. The uneasy balance between law enforcement and youthful ingenuity is tested, but the end arrives with a clear sense of justice served: the would-be murderers are unmasked, the political threat thwarted, and a community learns to listen to the voices of its youngest members.

Orson Welles’s narration frames the action with a calm, guiding presence, underscoring a story that blends adventure with political intrigue. The thread of mentorship and mischief runs through every scene, giving the audience a sense that even small acts—an early misdirection, a careful survey, a whispered warning—can steer a complex plot away from catastrophe. The result is a film that invites reflection on power, responsibility, and the power of a determined group of students to influence the course of events.

Last Updated: October 05, 2025 at 11:50