Les complices

I originally saw this film when it was first shown on commercial TV in the seventies and again in the mid eighties, but not in the theater. It seemed to be cut very badly to fit commercials...I found it very enjoyable with excellent acting and an interesting plot. It has never been available on video or DVD maybe due to licensing or a perception of low consumer interest by Universal. (If anyone has a copy in either format, let me know.) I don't think it's been shown on TV in at least 20 years. Most people I've talked to have never heard of it despite what I consider an all star cast including Hope Lange, Bradford Dillman, Pat Hingle, and Harry Guardino. I look forward to seeing it uncut someday.

As if John Frankenheimer decided to direct a special 1.5 hr Twilight Zone episode.

I saw this great movie at TV late in the night when i was young in the 70's. And it was absolutely fantastic and very intriguing to see the sequence of this story of a person amnesiac.

The story is very suspenseful and the actors are all excellent.

The directing is perfect.

If you are avid thriller, I strongly recommend it for you, although the film is extremely rare currently.

I possess a copy VHS that is in French, but i hope one day there will be a release in DVD.

I hope so. I give a 10 for this good effort.

Definitely screams '60's Universal Studio Telefilm', but if you liked the looks of those pictures (as I do), this is a well photographed, directed and acted little picture. Bradford Dillman, that Olivier of the B's, starred, but Pat Hingle and Harry Guardino had the tastier roles. James Goldstone directed -- he had one of the cleanest, most recognizable styles of late sixties contract directors, though his name is barely known.

The story is a very loose remake of Mirage, the 1960 Gregory Peck vehicle, but it is really another picture entirely. If you've seen the one, you have not seen the other.

Jigsaw swims simultaneously in alienation, paranoia, 60's technicolor psychedelia, and general cold war fear and loathing. The surprise ending is a visual gas, the cinematic equivalent of an acid flashback. It deserves a look if it ever shows up on the tube. In these more modern times of alienation, paranoia, and fear and loathing, an entertaining, slightly fluffy reminder that we've already met the enemy and he is STILL us.

Bradford Dillman plays a scientist who wakes up one morning in the middle of a bloody crime scene; having partial amnesia (or "global amnesia", which one character claims to define as elective loss of memory), the scientist finds a private detective in the phone book in the hopes of piecing his life back together. Abhorrent concoction very loosely based on Walter Ericson's book "Fallen Angel" (filmed in 1965 as "Mirage" with Gregory Peck). It was probably too racy for television--what with drugs and hippies added to the mix--that NBC initially refused to air it, which is how this low-budgeter wound up in theaters. Director James Goldstone gets freaky with the hyperkinetic visuals and camera-tricks, while editor Edward A. Biery goes wild with the zig-zag cuts. Unfortunately, their admittedly-colorful gimmicks cannot cover up the weaknesses of this updated plot, and the acting is woefully overripe. Dillman, under pressure to recall the events of the night in question, goes through an Actor's Seminar of tics, stammers, nose-wipes, and crazy half-laughs while spitting out dialogue like, "Dream...a dream...drugs...yeah, drugs...that SOUND...bells...help!" As a villainous fellow scientist with a Cheshire Cat smile, Pat Hingle nearly upstages Dillman in the Grand Thespian department by continually addressing everyone in baby-talk, strutting about like a middle-aged peacock and twisting his mouth around in agony. Hope Lange's scientist/love-interest is given the short shrift, but not before she screams at indifferent-lover Dillman: "What do I have to do, talk Ape Man? Me want You!" This is one frantic "Jigsaw"! *1/2 from ****