A psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, investigates the savage blinding of six horses with a metal spike in a stable in Hampshire, England. The atrocity was committed by an unassuming seventeen-year-old stable boy named Alan Strang, the only son of an opinionated but inwardly-timid father and a genteel, religious mother. As Dysart exposes the truths behind the boy's demons, he finds himself face-to-face with his own.

• United Artists
• Persky-Bright Productions
• Richard Burton
• Peter Firth
• Joan Plowright
• Harry Andrews
• Colin Blakely
• Eileen Atkins
• Jenny Agutter
• Kate Reid