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 =-_
Jack Warner Yolande Donlan Michael Goodliffe John Le Mesurier John Barron Moira Redmond Christine Bocca Brian Oulton Ray Barrett Norman Chappell Joan Newell Peter Ashmore Timothy Bateson Geoffrey Bayldon Basil Beale Gerald Campion Reginald Marsh Fred Ferris John Horsley Clifford Earl Charles Houston Julie Samuel Robert Raglan Graham Skidmore Kevin Stoney Charles Lamb Marianne Stone Geoffrey Russell Mike Moyer Show All…
El rostro sin nombre, Quebra-Cabeça, Le mystère de la villa blanche, Scotland yard: mosaico di un delitto, 谜图, Le Mystère de la Villa Blanche
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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.
”It's the only thing I hate about this job - ringing strange doorbells and bringing bad news.” - Det. Insp. Fred Fellows
Well shot, directed, written and acted police procedural (late) Noir from one of my favorite British genre directors of that time Val Guest. Authenticity is the name of the game here. Inspired by the Brighton Trunk Murders in the 1930’s, the film seems keen to portray police work in a very sober and realistic way. Therefore, it can be a little dry at times. But the two leads played very well of each other and both did a very good job keeping me engaged in the movie.
Val Guest, who also directed some standout films for Hammer Studios,…
Unsung Horrors Podcast Horror Gives Back Challenge
Day 14: 1960s
I don't know what's worse--no sugar in my tea or a fat porridge.
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.
I like police procedurals, so this one was right up my alley. It could be a bit too tedious if you are looking for more excitement in your October lineup.
Jack Warner plays a policeman, again, not far from retirement, again, in charge of the investigation into the murder of a young woman.
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 obvious manner in which the film…
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
Summer of Scam: The June / July Crime Season 2
I talk a lot about how Robert Wise continues to be very under-appreciated for what an adaptable director he was, but in some ways Val Guest was almost like a British mirror of Wise.
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.
There is one outstanding scene here, that being when Jack…
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.
After a tense credit sequence, daringly un-scored, in which Moira Redmond gets murdered by her lover, his face concealed from the camera, the film settles into a straightforward police procedural with Jack Warner and Ronald Lewis on the trail of the killer. It doesn't boast any high-octane chase elements which a modern version of the same story would inevitably demand but it is completely compelling in its downplayed depiction of detective work, its twisty…
That ending says more about the justice system than dozens of moody, yet ultimately, happy ending noirs.
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.
With about 100 minutes of screen time available to them, they have to get a shift on, and that's exactly…
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.
The film's storyline is based on actual events; a series of amazingly unrelated…
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.
law & order svu (1962)
