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The Worst Film Ever

Sadly Over-hyped

An Exercise In Nonsense

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

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 ****

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.

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.

I doubt Jigsaw was hip even at the time, the whole LSD theme married to a murder mystery being a patently obvious attempt to grab a young audience of the era without in the least truly showing any understanding of the sixties counterculture. The dated aspect aside, Jigsaw suffers from many problems, including overwrought acting, silly and stilted dialogue, LSD flashbacks that go on interminably long even after the point has been hammered home in the first 60 seconds, a failure to create any true suspense even though the actual plot is, on paper, a great vehicle to do just that, and an ending that is so trite and predictable (not to mention reminiscent of a lot of bad television shows) that the climax is actually an anti-climax. If it was a better movie, we might be able to suspend disbelief on a few things where it would help enjoyment, but the weaknesses are so glaring they only serve to highlight the improbabilities viewers might otherwise overlook. I saw Jigsaw on television and it is definitely late night TV fare meant to fill airspace and pass the time to kill somebody's insomnia rather than anything anybody ought to actively seek out. At very best, a three out of 10.