JIGSAW (1962)

In the bedroom of a coastal short-term rental house, a woman is trying to get her lover Johnny (whose face we don't see) to loll about in bed with her a little longer, then she tells him that she's pregnant. His reaction, clearly not the one she was going for, is to strangle her. Cut to a few days later when a real estate agent reports a break-in. The agent's mild-mannered associate (compared to the gruff impatience of his boss) came to work to find the office broken into; the only things taken were some rental leases. Eventually, as the police detectives (Jack Warner and Ronald Lewis) follow leads in the robbery, they discover the beach house, leased by a John Campbell, and the dead body inside, which the killer had started to cut up and put in a trunk. They also find luggage with J.S. initials on the outside and assume those are the dead woman's initials. So the hunt is on for the identities of the both the victim and the murderer. Despite some witnesses who met John Campbell, they have a hard time pinning anyone down until circumstantial evidence puts a vacuum cleaner salesman (Michael Goodliffe) at the scene of the crime. But was he there at the time of the crime? Despite the description on the DVD box, this is most certainly not a film noir—it's a straightforward police procedural, mostly set in broad daylight, which is at pains to humanize its characters, including the cops and the suspects. As such cop movies go, this is a bit above average, though it moves slowly and at almost 110 minutes feels too long. But the structure is interesting—as Warner spins possible scenarios, we see them presented as they might have happened. The older Warner and the younger Lewis make an amiable pair, Yolande Donlan is fine as one of the J.S. women, and Michael Goodliffe is especially good as the chief suspect. The location shooting adds to the realistic feel of the film, which is based on a novel which was itself based on the true story of the Brighton Trunk Murders of the 1930s. Pictured is Ronald Lewis. [DVD]