Danger Patrol

John Beal apprentices as a 'soup handler' under Harry Carey. They're the people who carry nitroglycerin where it's needed, on the oil fields typically, to start a well flowing or put out a fire. He needs the money so he can go to medical school. Then Carey takes him for dinner, and Beal meets his daughter, Sally Eilers. She spends her life worrying that Carey is going to blow himself up. Of course she and Beal fall in love.

It's a good idea for a movie, and the script is all right. Carey, as always, is a pleasure to watch on the screen, with his open, honest delivery. But the director is Lew Landers, a capable B director who worked at such a furious pace that he was beloved of cheaper producers, but would never get the chance or the time for an A picture. The year this came out, he directed nine pictures. No one can excel at that rate, even with those leads. In the 1950s he moved into television. Landers died in 1962 at the age of 61.

Well crafted programmer from RKO. The premise is a nail-biting natural-- namely, guys transporting highly explosive nitroglycerin from storage to oil fields where it's used in drilling. One false move from the handler and it's smithereens. Not only are the guys affected, it's the families too, never knowing whether the mister will be coming home. The 60-minutes deals as much with family as with the nitro.

Carey's the movie's actual star, carrying the storyline in a gruffly likable manner. He's like the foreman of the nitro crew, while Eilers plays his comely daughter. The romantic angle amounts to a cliché where she has to choose between rich guy Eric and nitro handler Beal. Her heart inclines toward Beal, but Carey dreads her becoming a young widow.

Using quirky actor Paul Guilfoyle as a traumatized ex-handler was an inspiration. In weirdly disturbing fashion, he dramatizes the emotional toll of the work, well paying though it is. Eilers is effective in her conflicted role, even though Beal appears too bland in his. The highlight is the nitro-loaded plane trip to Tampico. Because of happy endings, you usually know how a dangerous trip like this will turn out. But that's not the case here since there's reason to believe both ways. Thus the plane ride's a genuine nail-biter. All in all, I was highly entertained by this blue-collar example of studio craftsmanship.

I knew that nitroglycerin is a dangerous explosive, but I still enjoyed how the dispatcher, Frank M. Thomas, tells the new 'soup' handler, John Beal, that fact. "Here's a picture of a truck that the 'soup' blew up" says Thomas, and it's a blank picture. Beal's love interest is Sally Eilers, the daughter of the veteran soup handler, Harry Carey. She won't marry marry Beal because of the worry involved. And he won't quit because he wants the money the job pays to get to medical school. In desperation, he takes a dangerous job flying 'soup' to Mexico to put out an oil well fire. But Carey, sensing Eilers really loves Beal, takes matters in hand.

The drama is dedicated to the 'soup handlers' who made oil exploration possible, but it tends to telegraph events which robs the viewer of some suspense. We see throughout the anxiety the wives suffer about the fate of their husbands. It is easy to predict one of the handlers will be killed. ("What did they bury?" one mourner at the funeral asks. "Part of a shoe they found.") And it was easy to predict Carey's actions at the end. Clouzot's "Salaire de la peur, Le (1953)" is clearly a much better film on the same subject, but Danger patrol still is watchable entertainment.

Stagy, corny boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl-boy-regains-girl melodrama, but a solid glimpse of a world gone by and John Beal's moment as a male lead.

Dan Loring (John Beal) gets a job with the Goliath Explosives Corp. They deliver nitroglycerin to oil drilling sites. They call it soup. He's paired with veteran driver Sam Street (Harry Carey) who shows him how to handle the explosives and use it deep underground. He starts a relationship with Sam's daughter Cathy Street (Sally Eilers).

Of course, the comparison is The Wages of Fear, but this is nowhere near the intensity. I still like the nitro stuff although this movie handles it like a government educational film. I can do without the romance. After they tease the audience with explosives, it's hard to sit through a boring romance. Even going up into the sky does nothing to increase the intensity.