Radar-Geheimpolizei

Poor John Howard - once Bulldog Drummond, once a supporting actor in The Philadelphia Story, now starring in a Kit Parker film with a budget of 50 cents - about the power of radar.

He's not alone. Tom Neal, Adele Jergens, Myrna Dell, and Sid Melton join him in this Mystery Science Theater travesty.

I was no science whiz, but so far as I know, radar could never do any of the things shown in the film - find guns, fight crime - why, the police department has a Radar Division.

Some crooks steal radioactive substance, why I don't know, and it's up to those g-men to track them down.

Someone described this as futuristic - there actually was one futuristic thing in it and it was called a telemeter, which worked like a minicam. Of course it was run by radar (I guess). To me it's always interesting to see things like that in old films, such as what was basically a fax machine in Call Northside 777.

This film was done so cheaply that they would show a guy driving a car who momentarily would look up at a helicopter, for instance, and five minutes later you would see the same identical clip again. Ditto two guys riding in a car. This is the kind of film where if it made $10 it made a profit.

John Howard smartly moved into television where he had an extremely prolific career until he retired. Adele Jergens did TV but kept her hand in B movies, as well as the rest of her. Sid Melton, whom I now find annoying since watching these films, had a successful TV career, and Myrna Dell worked in TV.

And Tom Neal? Well, he beat Franchot Tone to a pulp and put him in the hospital, then he went on trial for the murder of his wife. And his life was much more interesting than this film.

Once you see Lippert, you know you're in for a slab of cinematic torture.

Radar is your friend. It is responsible for everything good and sacred in society. No evil intentions can be hidden from the pervasive eyes of the almighty radar.

RADAR THIS!!!

Instead of a story, you get lots of black and white shots of guys standing around, inane conversations, bleak settings and even bleaker faces. You can't even tell the good guys from the baddies....oh wait, EVERYBODY was bad in this one. I knew my eyes were viewing this horrific monstrosity despite the periods of coma induced blackouts and the experience can be compared to vacationing on the sun without SPF 5,000,000. Why the pointless scenes of helicopters flying over open roads? I cannot recall one character from this poopiefest except for inappropriately named Blackie. Oh, remember that hilarious comedian guy, Sid Melton? Because I DON'T!! Instead, his attempts at humor left scarring impressions and hopes of his quick sniper death.

You see, this one just hurts...on so many levels. Nothing happens, there's no interesting story so the useless dialogue serves no purpose. This was only an hour long! I swear Father Time was yawning during this drivel. Even Mike and the bots reel from the effects of this one. Damn that Hypno Helio Static Stasis!

My rating would be zero as a movie, but ten as an MST3K show. It's so dull that your attention wanders, and you can sort of get the plot after you watch the bots go after it a couple of times. These movies do have have a certain fascination, and I'd like to know more about the bland, bland cinematic world of Robert Lippert. The lives of people who went to Lippert films must have tasted like stale wheat. You can't help but wonder if the relationship of Blackie and his gal had a least some spark. While the damned "Pillbox" (Melton, dear God, it's Melton) is in a hell of his own partaking. Note the cameo of Ed Wood actor at the end. I could look up his name, but, ah... it's just too boring.

Please, before being harsh with this Lippert production, don't forget that the director is no one else than Sam Newfield, the pope of the grade Z movie, a chain film maker, as many others of this era, forties and fifties, before the raging wave of TV industry, the tsunami that occured on the big screen business. For me, this is a pretty good, agreeable little thriller, fun and enjoyable to watch. And for fifty-seven minutes, you can't argue to have lost much time. Espionage Z flick, it is fast paced, pulled by a rather good directing, at the level of an Edward L Cahn's movie, the equivalent of a Sam Newfield.

Not that anything in Radar Secret Service will tell you this is a futuristic drama because everybody drives cars and dresses in fashions of the present day of 1950, but the fact is even the movie-going public was aware that radar did not have the capabilities so described in that time. It still doesn't. But the premise around the film that radar was an all purpose crime fighting and detecting tool was way in the future.

Two futuristic cops, John Howard and Ralph Byrd, ride around in a car equipped with radar detection and they're on a case involving some stolen uranium. The gang has all kinds of layers within it with your typical gangster's moll Adele Jergens supposedly gunman Tom Neal's woman, but really two timing him with mastermind Tris Coffin. In fact this whole film is proof positive of the premise there is definitely no honor among thieves.

Something tells me that the Radar Secret Service was not used in tracking down two bit stickup men and that the public was supposed to feel good about radar keeping us safe. This film really plays to Cold War paranoia.

On the plus side Adele Jergens and Myrna Dell playing a waitress are always good to look at and perennial Lippert Pictures regular Sid Melton is once again in this for comic relief. Sid was really needed here.