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.

"Zigzag" is a 1970 film that stars George Kennedy as Paul Kennedy, a dying man who frames himself for an unsolved murder/kidnapping so his family can benefit from the reward money. His doctor has suggested a risky operation, but Paul has refused. He comes up with an elaborate scheme to be accused of the murder and collect the reward money under another name.Just one problem - after he's arrested, he collapses and gets the surgery and is cured. Now in order to save himself from the chair, he actually has to solve the case.Anne Jackson plays Paul's loving wife, and Eli Wallach his lawyer. So it's a top cast that provides good acting performances all around. Kennedy is good as the quietly desperate Paul, and one really feels the love he has for his family.This is an okay film destroyed by the ending, which makes you feel like you've been sitting there watching it for NOTHING. The audience feels betrayed at the end.Watch it for an exercise in frustration.

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.

George Kennedy is an unusual actor for me. He is largely forgotten, yet has an Oscar to his name. He's in many of the films everyone remembers well, such as The Dirty Dozen, Airport and The Naked Gun, and yet he rarely catches the limelight as the leading man. He's also supremely talented, without ever appearing to be trying hard.In this superior thriller, he plays a man who discovers that he has a brain tumour. He arranges his own death, so that his wife can claim the insurance money. However, just as his plan is about to kick into action, he learns that he has been mis-diagnosed and that, in fact, he is not dying at all.This film stays one step ahead of the audience at all points. It is ingenious and interesting throughout, and has the added benefit of being a touch different to the majority of hard-boiled thrillers from this period. Perhaps it gets over-complex, and the downbeat ending is typical of the time. Nevertheless, this is a good film, and like some of the other user's who have reviewed it I am very baffled as to why it is unavailable on video.