Radar Secret Service

You see, Bulldog Drummond and Dick Tracy (actually two aging actors who at one time or another played those roles) are working as "Radar Agents" of the government. I wonder if they had badges that said "Radar Agent"?

"Our beams have all the roads covered" the head agent says, so we are reassured that radar can solve any crime. Everybody knows that radar beams aimed at all the streets catches criminals, right? So, ordinary crimes that would have been solved by regular means are solved by radar machines instead, presumably at a great waste of taxpayer dollars. And a black Chevrolet runs around town with a silly metal dome bolted to its roof.

The director of this movie really did a lousy job, and the acting is poor except for Tom Neal who is convincing as a bad guy. Buxom Adele Jergens has the role of a blonde gang moll, but I still haven't figured out why her character is in the script at all. John Howard, as Radar Agent Travis, has exactly the same expression on his face throughout the whole film. I guess he thought "why bother" to smile, frown or emote at all. Absolutely nobody involved seems to care that they are in this film, but all they are asked to do is just read their lines and get in and out of cars.

If you are a fan of any of the actors involved, or even a fan of Lippert Pictures (which made some far better movies than this), you should just skip "Radar Secret Service".

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.

This film must be the most radar friendly film ever made with "The Deadly Mantis" being a close second. Yes, this film seems almost to be an advertisement for the wonders of radar and chances are if you have seen this obscure flick, you watched it on the riff show, Mystery Science Theater 3000. I could not imagine seeing it any other way, just as I cannot see this film having all that many actual fans. Seriously, the film plays out like an advertisement for something and in the case of radar it is not as if one can actually purchase it or needs it. Well, I guess someone fishing could use it, but aside from that, most people just do not really need it. It is like the film had to stress upon us the importance of it because if we are not interested it will no longer be used!

The story has a special department that uses radar to solve crimes. At the beginning two guys are using it to find a gun tossed out of a car or something. That is spectacular! Why it is so easy, I do not understand why they don't use radar for things like that now! Oh yeah, that is not how radar works! Well, at a diner we have some people starting a caper that involves radioactive substances and they actually do manage to get it! What amazes me is that for some reason the radar can find a buried gun, but not a radioactive substance! That should be relatively simple for the all powerful radar to pick up! You would think anyway, but no, they have to do a lot of actual police work until the end when they put radar into a chopper to find the stolen merchandise!

This made for a pretty good episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The mads kept acting like this one was going to be torturous to watch as it would eclipse 'Deep Hurting' and 'Sandstorm' as one of the more painful experiences yet. However, I do believe the rock climbing scene from "The Lost Continent" and the Hercules 'Sandstorm' were much more dragging. No wonder Mike made it through this relatively unscathed. Funny episode, the the best part about this one was the short preceding it.

So the film was like an advertisement...to much so. It actually detracted from the film. Any time the criminals would get serious someone would pop up talking about how wonderful radar was and all that. It simply makes any suspense completely and utterly disappear. Not that there was much suspense to begin with. The film is better than say, "Rocket Attack U.S.A" as it does have a semblance of a plot going on, but on the whole a very badly done film. The makers of this one were just too enamored with radar, I'm afraid.

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.

This movie seems to think radar is some super weapon that can do absolutely anything. I mean, it begins with quick scene on how radar was important in World War II. While this might seem fair enough, the movie takes radar's importance to ludicrous levels. When a truck is hijacked, the government uses radar to track it down. Radar mounted on a vehicle can apparently deliver TV quality images that follow the truck like a camera (I wonder why?). You can't say a bad thing about radar in this film. Don't worry, though. The guys from MST3K came to the rescue, and made it quite enjoyable (like they always do with bad movies) with their running commentary.