Jigsaw – 1962 | 107 mins | Crime, Drama | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Jigsaw is a chilling murder mystery based on Hilary Waugh’s novel ‘Sleep Long My Love’. At 107 minutes, the film is long but never tiresome. Val Guest’s black-and-white pseudo-documentary of police procedure is essentially a murder mystery, the storyline hides nothing from the viewer; the clues are there if you’re willing to pick up on them.

The setting is a seedy Brighton; Sgt. Wilks (Ronald Lewis) is called to investigate a burglary in which thieves stole property leases from a real estate office. When the estate agent complains that the police aren’t doing enough, Wilks’ superior Inspector Fellows (Jack Warner) joins the enquiry and during the course of their investigation a woman’s dead body is uncovered at an isolated beach house leased to a man named John Campbell. The local constabulary painstakingly assemble the “jigsaw” of random clues to reconstruct the woman’s history and her last moments on earth, hoping this will lead them to the killer. The police follow leads from eyewitnesses, the murder weapon, items found in the beach house and from Campbell’s car but after exhaustive enquiries it quickly becomes apparent that ‘John Campbell’ was an assumed name and that the elusive killer has skilfully covered his tracks. Clyde Burchard (Michael Goodliffe), a womanising vacuum cleaner salesman who owns a car that fits the police description is arrested on suspicion of committing the murder, and Inspector Fellows summons a host of key witnesses to the police station in the hope they’ll identify the guilty party. Has Fellows finally got his man?