Produced in colour by the Children’s Film Foundation (CFF), Headline Hunters was screened on Saturday mornings at ABC cinemas throughout Britain in 1968.
The 60-minute film follows the good and bad fortunes of three children struggling to save their father’s newspaper from closing down.
Mr Hunter (David Beale) owns the weekly Whitfield Clarion, and his sudden illness on the eve of publication is a terrible blow, followed by the desertion of the Clarion‘s chief reporter to the opposition paper, The Bugle.
Mr Hunter’s three children and a few of their friends rally around Henry the printer (Bill Owen) and go out and hunt for news to make the headlines.
Terry the eldest (Leonard Brockwell), calls them together for a conference. “We’ve got to go round the town and see if anything unusual is happening,” he says. “Somebody’s got to take the photographs, somebody else must do interviews, and we’ve got to have film reviews and articles about fashion, cookery and so on”.
The very junior reporters scatter through the town clutching notebooks and pencils.
“I’m the crime reporter,” says young Peter (Stephen Garlick). “I’m going to look for bank robbers”. Luckily for the Clarion, he spots and foils robbers, though it is a factory they are robbing.
The children seize on a good cause – the preservation of a piece of waste ground for a children’s playground, and their canvassing of the townsfolk makes big headlines in their first issue.
Unluckily for the Clarion, the rival owner of The Bugle (a nasty piece of work) sends another equally nasty piece of work to sabotage the paper’s fifty-year-old printing press, and all seems lost.
And when their delivery van is sabotaged, the children deliver the newspapers by pram, bike, trolley and donkey!
Terry Hunter
Leonard Brockwell Joan Hunter
Susan Payne Peter Hunter
Stephen Garlick Henry
Bill Owen Alec
Jeffrey Chandler Bogshot
Reginald Marsh Fustwick
Keith Smith Gresham
Glyn Houston Harry
David Lodge Ernie
Dermot Kelly Carter
Frank Williams Percy
Malcolm Epstein Mr Hunter
David Beale Mrs Hunter
Maureen O’Reilly
Director
Jonathan Ingrams
Video
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Mr Hunter (David Beale) owns the weekly Whitfield Clarion, and his sudden illness on the eve of publication is a terrible blow, followed by the desertion of the Clarion‘s chief reporter to the opposition paper, The Bugle.
“I’m the crime reporter,” says young Peter (Stephen Garlick). “I’m going to look for bank robbers”. Luckily for the Clarion, he spots and foils robbers, though it is a factory they are robbing.
