judah-17 It seems that none of the reviewers to date have realized that the "twist" ending was the cleverest and best denouement possible. By occurring as it did, his wife got all he originally wanted her to get, and much more!! If it had not happened, although he would have been entitled to the reward money for discovering who the real murderer was, the latter paying for his crime, he would still have ended up in jail for serious public mischief by causing a false accusation to be laid and an expensive police investigation and jury trial to occur. It makes no difference that it was self-directed or directed against anyone else as far as the difficulties he caused may be concerned. In addition, the court might have fined him in an amount equal to or even more than the needless cost to the state. This would have eaten up most, if not all, of the reward money.However, because of the unexpected ending, his wife would be entitled to collect both on the double indemnity provision in his insurance policy and, as his heir, the full reward money as belonging to his estate. That's more than he had schemed for her.Beautiful!

martin lane Would Hitchcock have made something of this strained premise?..One hopes he would have avoided some of the silly staging (Kennedy escaping from his hospital room in a black suit but no shirt (( would the suit have been left in the room of a recovering prisoner under guard????))Via a freight elevator that is FULL of hospital staff...including a morgue attendant...who ignore this huge half dressed blond band-aided (after brain surgery)giant AS IF HE IS NOT THERE?!?! I was prepared by this scene for a later "twist" which had the central murder victim (in a flashback)willingly getting into "a car he knew"...with the film then contradicting this by having the person who the victim was supposedly expecting to be in the car scream that the car was not even hers at the time of the killing...I wont reveal who was in the car ...(just suffice to say that it was someone who the victim would not have been expecting a lift from...and that their presence makes the whole crime as illogical and unlikely as much of the rest of this film.

kennethwright2612 From the perspective of 2003, the saddest thing about this very downbeat picture is that it could never get made as a commercial production these days - certainly not with a middle-aged and far from beautiful character player in the lead. Although its structure relies on two large implausibilities, the story, characters and motivations are unashamedly adult and human: Zigzag takes life seriously, and when was the last mainstream picture you saw that did that?The versatile and sympathetic heavy George Kennedy (if I'm ever on a passenger plane that's in trouble, I'd want him at the controls) gives an honest, understated performance as a flawed family man who takes a desperate road to a strange kind of redemption. The way he does that would have made a terrific lower-depths 1940s noir for a second-division star like Dana Andrews or Edmond O'Brien, but Zigzag loses nothing from its setting in the less obviously cinematic milieu of respectable lower-middle-class life in an up-and-up America that was just beginning to turn Dayglo.I don't say it's a neglected classic - there's not the slightest touch of humour, the supporting cast aren't trying very hard, and the look of the film is reminiscent of an old episode of Kojak (so are most of the actors). Zigzag is just a solid piece of grown-up dramatic entertainment whose modest ambitions are positively Shakesperean compared to almost anything you could get insulted by at your local multiplex this weekend.

Paul-250 George Kennedy plays what may well be his best performance as a man who frames himself for a crime he didn't commit so his wife can benefit from the reward money, and then becomes enmeshed in a complex and gripping spiral of events after he discovers he is not going to die after all. Anyone who enjoys thrillers will enjoy this film, and it is a mystery to me why it is not available in video.