Air Patrol

Saw this 2/3/17 thanks to cable on demand. Over the years I've become something of a connoisseur of Maury Dexter movies, with "Air Patrol" the latest after having seen (or endured) "Wild on the Beach" (1965), "Surf Party" (1964), and "The Day Mars Invaded Earth" (1963). "Air Patrol" is without question the best on that list, keeping in mind that it is a distinction based strictly on the level of play in Dexter's single-A cinematic league.

In "Air Patrol" a thief steals a Fragonard, helicoptering off with it from a Wilshire Boulevard rooftop. Apparently choppers were still exotic and relatively rare for the 1962 audience, during the time between the end of the series "Whirlybirds" and the Alcatraz operation depicted in "Point Blank" (1967).

The thief threatens to destroy the purloined Rococo masterpiece unless a $100,000 "ransom" is paid. The art buyer's secretary is played by Merry Anders, who, in spite of the limited acting demands of her role, is both effective and beautiful in the tradition of Beverly Garland. Robert Dix narrates as he performs in a first-person styling of Jack Webb's Sgt. Joe Friday, only Dix' cop character not only carries a badge but also flies an LAPD helicopter to catch the thief. The cast includes Willard Parker and Dexter regular Russ Bender as detectives, with Parker's Lt. Vern Taylor sharing with us his knowledge of art history.

The final act resembles last acts in "The Third Man"(1949), "He Walked by Night"(1949) and "711 Ocean Drive" (1950). Only here an agile senior citizen leads the cops on a daylight chase through a partially filled Los Angeles River. Douglass Dumbrille gives us an unconventional-looking thief who reminded me of East bloc chieftans Walter Ulbricht or Gomulka in their final days. He seems to inhabit Del Webb's Leisure World, not Jack Webb's police world.

Unlike the virtual house arrest of the action in "Wild on the Beach", "Air Patrol" makes extensive use of location photography, giving us clear, just-made-yesterday looks at Los Angeles at the beginning of the 1960's, with views of the Miracle Mile along Wilshire Boulevard, the Sepulveda Dam, Los Angeles River, Hollywood (101) Freeway, and the Cahuenga Pass.

In spite of the movie's obvious limitations, which include a strange, ill-fitting score, it all kinda works. Weird, but it works. Never let admiration for Ford, Hawks, Welles and others make us forget their fellow auteurs Dexter, Arch Hall, Sr., Ray Dennis Steckler, William Witney, and the recently departed Ted V. Mikels.

They all made movies.

In AIR PATROL, one of many low-budget movies directed by Maury Dexter, the wheels of justice move slowly, and the blades even slower. Scenes with the police helicopter dotting the blue sky of what seems like the rural suburbs just beyond a skyscraper-laden landscape, takes some time, but are still suspenseful and entertaining...

Beginning with a soundtrack like any cop program of that era, though leaning on a jazzy upbeat over the usual forceful punch... other times providing bits of Halloween horror flick Tiburon sounds... as a faceless male thief steals a painting, and then takes off in a helicopter that meets him on that high-rise building's roof...

The one-man knockoff went easy enough, and only one lady, working late, got in the way: but only for the amount of time to get bonked unconscious in this breezy Late Noir with a beautiful, edgy, cranky, cop-hating ingenue, with old school chops of one of those brisk and edgy Femme Fatalle's, or the curt best friend of the leading lady on here, she's in the lead...

Waking up after the heist with a feeling liken to a hangover, or worse, and she's our primary starlet, looking better than ever: that being Merry Anders, as part of our ongoing "Merry Anders Cinema" and/or, on other flicks sans the exotically wide-eyed ingenue, Maury Dexter Cinema, for her already covered in b-movie write-ups of THE HYPNOTIC EYE and RAIDERS FROM BENEATH THE SEA, here playing Mona, under questioning in the same office building by a wise, patient yet assertive veteran cop Lt. Taylor played by Willard Parker and then our hero, a mellow, younger lawman whose primary task is a flier in the AIR PATROL. Bob Dix's Sgt. Castle slowly melts Anders down into not being so feisty and aggravated... But that's skipping ahead...

Merry has the best role here, or at least the most rounded, delivering a character-arc as she's questioned several times, going through a barrage of emotions in several offices and her home/budding art studio as well: She slowly melts from being a young generational rebel to a more sincere and understanding "gal" of the previous era... but without losing her independence...

Other soft-interrogations occur in the low budget fashion, mostly indoors after an establishing shot of either apartment buildings or houses...

Nothing fancy, and yet the storytelling's sparse and effective, aided by a Film Noir style narration by Dix, explaining not only the mysterious case of who could have possibly acquired a copter to pull off such a scheme, but also providing a sort of "TV Pilot" vibe throughout... And yet PATROL doesn't try winning over the audience with gunshots, car chases or testosterone...

Instead, it's a vehicle that goes beneath the catapulting aftermath in a manner to realistically show the meticulous, detailed precision of how cops work rather than the daydream of what it'd be like to live an adventurous life - fans of the standard Cop Movie, beware of this sleeper. "I'll tell you about the Force as a career," Dix smoothly tells Anders, "and you can tell me about the town where nobody paints." Belated pulpy new noir at its most obscure finest!

This film Air Patrol looks like a pilot for a television series involving the Air Patrol of the Los Angeles Police Department. Robert Dix plays a retired Air Force helicopter pilot now doing the same thing for the LAPD.

The plot concerns the theft and then ransom demand for a valuable painting. The thieves slugged Merry Anders and made off at night with the painting from a helicopter off the roof of the Los Angeles building it was in.

Willard Parker of the robbery detail and Dix of Air Patrol handle the theft and the demand for ransom. The surveillance of the Air Patrol is of course the key to solving the case and recovering a painting.

Routine action film, obviously no television series came from this. Nothing terribly special.

Maury Dexter, who went on to direct LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE and HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN, began his career with Lippert Productions and cranked out many exciting B films. AIR PATROL is one of them, a film all about aerial cops who fly around Los Angeles, attempting to nail the bad guys.

A famous painting, worth a fortune, is the center of attention here where some real nasties are out to get their hands on it. Lots of familiar faces in this one, but at the top is veteran Douglas Dumbrille, at his crafty best. There's a terrific scene where he meets a "colleague" and pushes him off a 10 story building --just for starters.

This is really a great film, campy and fun as you watch the cops vs. The robbers and some excellent aerial footage of helicopters, especially a car chase as they hover over Dumbrille's station wagon as he makes his getaway. A big thank you to FXM retro channel for re-running this little gem of late, and perfect viewing for late night weekends. Some great shots of 60s Hollywood, especially the famous Hollywood Bowl, eerily empty and very quiet.

Dexter would next go on to direct the cult classic THE DAY MARS INVADED EARTH. These two films make a fantastic back to back feature. You have to shop around as this may be on a private label dvd.

This has a bit of an air of the documentary to it as we follow the investigations of the LAPD as they try to track down the thieves of a valuable paining by 19th century French artist Fragonard. Now although we don't know who has done the deed, we know right from the start how this audacious crime was committed and so are, for a while, one step ahead of "Sgt. Castle" (Robert Dix) as he uses his new airborne sleuthing skills to work with "Lt. Taylor" (Willard Parker) to track down the picture before it's smuggled out of the country. The detective elements of the drama are quite dry, as is the acting and the writing - this is really just a sort of public information film that demonstrates to the audience (and to the criminal fraternity) that there is a new dynamic to policing and that makes tailing and surveillance much simpler. It passes an hour effortlessly enough, but it won't challenge your own grey cells in the least and I doubt you'll remember it for long afterwards, either.