Radar Secret Service

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.

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!

Radar Secret Service is a service to nobody unless watched with MST. Wow what a film, slightly more action than Starfighters but not by much. More script than action here, men in gray suits and hats stand around and talk about what they are A: Going to do, and B: What they plan to do. In between there's a couple of gals who look exactly alike yet are different characters who are somehow involved and a boss who talks to the main radar operations guy on how wonderful radar is. Nothing really is accomplished even though the movie claims something did happen. Mike and the bots make this film enjoyable. Oh yes, Sid Melton is thrown in for comedy relief, but this is not apparent. Enjoy!!

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.

Maybe I've gotten to the point where I've seen so many movies I have a hard time telling them apart, but this movie was extremely dull. It was about a bunch of people who were committing crimes like murder and I guess radar was being used to find them. This film mostly suffers from being boring. It's sad to see a film so old that's so dull. I guess these times weren't necessarily the golden age of movies. At least this one didn't have giant animals or killer animals like every other bad movie released in the 1950's.

The worst part is how I simply didn't care about what was going on. The characters had no depth at all. When you have a story where everyone looks the same, that's a huge problem. I understand why people had a hard time telling the good guys apart from the bad guys. This whole thing is pointless and adds absolutely nothing unique to the wide variety of movies in existence. It was hard to tell what was going on and I didn't care. *1/2