Jigsaw Dvd 1962
Percival Blanco
Jigsaw is a 1962 British black and white crime film directed by Val Guest and starring Jack Warner and Ronald Lewis.[1] The screenplay was by Guest based on the 1959 police procedural novel Sleep Long, My Love by Hillary Waugh,[2] with the setting changed from the fictional small town of Stockford, Connecticut,[n 1] to Brighton, Sussex, while retaining the names and basic natures of its two police protagonists and most of the other characters.
Her remains are found both dismembered and incinerated, together with a knife and a hacksaw in a small furnace in Saltdean, near Brighton. Two local detectives, following up a small but odd burglary of leases at an estate agent's office, discover the body and take on the investigation of the death. The dead woman cannot be identified but they initially think she is called Jean Sherman, since a suitcase with the initials JS had been left at the scene. The main suspect is an unidentified man who has used the false identity of John Campbell to rent the house in which the woman was found. The detectives methodically develop and follow up leads to identify both people, mostly in Brighton, but also further afield in Lewes and Greenwich.
DI Fellows goes to Jean Sherman's house and discovers that she is still alive. He tricks her into giving him a name and address to get a sample of her handwriting, which is the same as that found in the victim's house. Flashback scenes in her story specifically exclude the viewer from seeing the man John Campbell. Miss Sherman admits a one-night stand with Campbell.
They track down and arrest a suspect described by several persons as the man who occupied the house, but the case takes an unexpected turn when he admits that he was a door-to-door salesman who was with the victim but denies any involvement in her murder. His story checks out.
After the dead woman is positively identified, the veteran inspector leading the case has to tell the parents, then develops a "wild idea" about the identity of another suspect, and orders a standard procedure that confirms his theory in a non-standard fashion. This suspect (Tenby) admits knowledge of the death but his contention that it was accidental appears to be unshakeable until the detectives realise that he has lied about a crucial detail: claiming to have bought something on a Monday bank holiday.[3]
Guest said "I was very keen to do Jigsaw because I liked the story enormously and thought it was very clever and very unusual, to show the police working and not getting anywhere. The awful dead ends they come up against which is what that picture shows." The film was one of his favourites. "I tried a lot of stuff out in there, which hadn't been done, the back and forward cutting in time, without having to explain it, I tried to write it so you would understand what had happened."[4]
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, once asked the director what he was currently doing, and Guest replied that he was working on Jigsaw. The Duke thought working on a murder mystery with the Brighton police would be "bloody boring".[5]
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "An undeniably entertaining story-teller, Val Guest has an efficient if facile talent which is ideally suited to this kind of mechanical whodunit. The meticulous yet fascinating business of police detection, allied to well-used and sharply photographed Brighton locations, holds the interest and provides a few macabre shocks; though the constant dovetailing of scenes, by the use of a noise or gesture linking one shot to the next, is apt to become tiresome. Inevitably, Jack Warner's Inspector smacks of "Dock Green" cosiness, and what human touches the script allows itself are sprayed on with thoughtless precision, as if a character has only to refer often enough to a football match he's missing to impress on an audience that he is a credible human being with a life outside his job. However, Yolande Donlan's embittered spinster and Michael Goodliffe's shifty salesman are conceived and acted with relish."[6]
The Guardian described the film as "one of the finest postwar British crime movies and possibly the best depiction of the seaside town on film. Caught in its seedy corruption, Brighton emerges as a far cry from the bumbling world with which (Val) Guest had until then been associated."
Leslie Halliwell said: "Absorbing and entertaining little murder mystery which sustains its considerable length with interesting detail and plays as fair as can be with the audience. Excellent unassuming entertainment."[8]
The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 3/5 stars, writing: "This satisfying murder mystery benefits from the reassuring presence of Jack Warner as the detective on the case. Set in Brighton, director Val Guest adopts an unsensational, pseudo-documentary approach that concentrates on the often laborious details of police procedure as the identity of dead woman is ascertained and her killer is slowly unmasked."[9]
A woman is found murdered in a seaside house along the coast from Brighton in the county of East Sussex, England. Local D.I. Fred Fellows and D.S. Jim Wilks lead an investigation methodically following up leads and clues mostly in Brighton and Hove but also further afield. _-= Based on the novel "Sleep Long My Love" by Hillary Waugh and Inspired by the Brighton Trunk Murders of the late 1930's =-_
Early sixties British police procedural whodunnit set around Brighton and based on real life events, with Jack Warner playing Det. Insp. Fred Fellows trying to put the pieces together of a very complicated murder jigsaw.
Some nice location filming and some good solid acting from the large cast, it shows the nitty gritty of the grinding police work involved in trying to solve the murder of a young woman whose dismembered body has been found in a trunk in a rented house.
Very involving, it doesn't shy away from the seedier sides of life and if you guess the identity of the murderer you're a better detective than me.
Watched on Tubi.
More mystery than horror I suppose. A British police procedural that is both very British and very procedural as we follow two detectives out to solve the murder and semi-dismemberment of a young lady found in a trunk.
It is an out and out procedural, which reinforces it's realistic feel by providing no musical score to nudge the viewer's feelings in any particular direction, simply relying on story and performance.
The are plenty of films like this but few, fewer still British ones, which are dedicated to showing the sheer grind of the search for the tiniest of clues that will help the police discover first of all the identity of the victim who has been chopped up and partially incinerated, and ultimately the identity of the killer.
The plot is multi layered and filled with twists and turns. It's a classic whodunit, with a murder investigation at its core. The complexity of the mystery and the way it unfolds keeps audience engaged and guessing until the end
Similarly, he became renowned for a particular brand of films. In Guest's case that would arguably be science fiction through his Quatermass films and the superb The Day the Earth Caught Fire, although his late career farces and sex comedies became fairly synonymous with him. Yet he also made a good few fine crime films and Jigsaw is one of them, although not perhaps his best.
Val Guest sticks his auteur flag in the sand as writer, director and producer of Jigsaw, even casting his wife Yolande Donlan in a central role. The result of this burst of control freakery is impressive and it's puzzling that the film is not better known.
A police procedural in the truest sense of the word, and a really strong, snappy and fast-moving one. Set in Brighton, it begins with the local police following up on a burglary in town by visiting the suspect's home in Saltdean, five miles away, and discovering a murdered woman's torso hidden in a trunk. Thanks to a prologue, the audience knows what the woman looked like with a head, and the first name of the man who sawed it off, but the initials "J.S." on two suitcases at the crime scene complicate things and threaten to lead the detectives astray.
It's hard not to to draw comparisons when this movie is from the same decade as one of the most iconic horror movies ever, but it has it's differences.
It was fun to follow the detectives as they go do their jobs.
A little slow at times, and kinda confusing, but entertaining.
A nice way to kick into October.
This is a blast from the past. I haven't seen this since BBC2's Cops on the Box season which the ever handy Genome site tells me was 31st May 1993. Seeing as I'm having a bit of a Jack Warner marathon of late (I watched Quatermass again at the weekend and have recently got through the Acorn DVD set of the 1970s episodes of Dixon of Dock Green) I thought it was high time to revisit this 1962 film which sees the avuncular Warner take something of a busman's holiday from his small screen role as PC George Dixon to portray Detective Inspector Fellows of Brighton CID.
Inspired by the "Brighton Trunk Murders" of the 1930's, written and directed by Val Guest, this 1962 British Production starring Jack Warner - as Detective Inspector Fellows - is filmed in and around Brighton. It's a superb, taut murder mystery and it's not the usual "Dixon of Dock Green" cozy role for Warner.
The city of Brighton and Hove on the south coast of England brings us this thrilling, twisting and turning tale of terror to our screens. A murder mystery which we get to watch from start to finish, daring us to workout who the devious culprit could possibly be. It maybe a slow burn story, leaving no stone unturned as we follow our two main detectives as they try to solve this brutal murder case. But following the clues like a jigsaw puzzle, watching these two experienced investigators slot each piece into place is brilliant to watch. Unfortunately the pieces of this particular jigsaw puzzle might not just fit together!
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