The screenplay—originally titled Friday, Saturday, Sunday—was adapted by two writers who had been blacklisted in the 1950s, Howard Rodman (credited here under the pseudonym Henri Simoun) and Abraham Polonsky.

[3] Siegel was a genre director known at the time for taut action films like The Lineup (1958) and Hell Is for Heroes (1962), as well as the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

In New York City's Spanish Harlem, police detectives Dan Madigan and Rocco Bonaro break into a sleazy apartment and arrest Barney Benesch, a hoodlum wanted for questioning by a Brooklyn precinct.

Despite the deadline, Madigan tries to spend some time with his wife, Julia, who is socially and sexually frustrated as a result of her husband's dangerous and time-consuming job, though unknown to her he has a girl on the side, Jonesy, a nightclub singer.

Knowing Julia was looking forward to dancing, he leaves her in the hands of Captain Ben Williams, who uses the opportunity to get her drunk and seduce her—he nearly succeeds, but she can't go through with it.

“Seigel seems to feel the oddness of his position as a rebel director in a large corporation and relates it, on screen, to those of his non-conformist hero/victims.”[6] In 1972, Widmark reprised the title role (literally bringing the character back from the dead) for the NBC television series Madigan.