Danger Zone

Long before he was Beaver Cleaver's father, Hugh Beaumont had an earlier television series in TV's infancy where he played a private detective complete with Raymond Chandler patter. Lippert managed to get three feature films from this series by stringing two of the half hour episodes together.

Beaumont works out of San Francisco where he lives on his charter boat when he's not sleuthing for a fee. This episode concerns him getting in trouble twice because a woman asked him for a favor. The man is not Sam Spade he's more like Miles Archer.

Favor one is Virginia Dale who asks him to bid on a suitcase at a public auction. That gets him involved with a smuggling racket and a saxophone. Favor two is when another private eye Tom Neal gets him to 'escort' a young lady to a private party on a boat. That gets him involved with a murder and a divorce. Is anyone sensing a pattern here?

Nothing special here though Beaumont is good in a part that's a quantum leap from Ward Cleaver.

This film was so bad it was good. Fireign Theater must have drawn upon Danger Zone when they concocted Nick Danger. The hilariously corny metaphors (e.g., "...about as interesting as Mother's Day at an orphanage..."), the sudden right turns in the plot, characters stiffly showing up out of nowhere, the wise cracking, police taunting leading man. Oh, this is indeed a tarnished gem. And the names. Spadely (shades of Sam Spade) and the rummy bloodhound human mascot, Shicker. (Shicker, of course, is Yiddish for drunkard.) The flatness of the scenes reminded me of the early Superman TV series. Let's all stand around and deliver our lines one at a time. OK, I said my line. Now you say yours. Everybody get a turn? Good. Next scene. It takes about a half hour to solve the mystery, so they introduce a brand new plot with some of the same characters. Oy, what a mess.

Danger Zone is an odd little double-truck of a movie; it tells two entirely independent stories, one after the other, though with three recurring characters. The only plausible explanation is that the stories were pilot episodes of a television series that never got picked up, but were salvaged by packaging as a twofer and farming out as a programmer to theater chains.

A troubleshooter who earns his keep renting boats on the San Francisco waterfront, O'Brian (Hugh Beaumont) picks up spare change by taking on freelance assignments; his usual fee is $50, for which he is usually set up. He shares his nautical digs with an old souse called (of course) The Professor (Edward Brophy), a Runyonesque character with a Thesaurus instead of a voicebox -- he never says "I had the chance" if he can proclaim "The opportunity befell me." Then there's the dim-witted and antagonistic police detective (Richard Travis), always ready to clap the cuffs on Beaumont just before the truth emerges.

Neither of the stories -- the first about a woman who pays Beaumont to bid an exorbitant amount on a locked suitcase that turns out to contain a saxophone, the second about a private detective (Tom Neal, of Detour notoriety) who sets up Beaumont as correspondent, and murderer, in a society divorce case -- gets worked out in any satisfying way. The half-hour allotted to each allows little room for extra characters or unexpected bends in the road (television was to prove that the most successful mystery/detective shows thrived in a hour format). Danger Zone, viewed as early television, is perhaps a tad better than such pioneers as Martin Kane, Private Eye -- at least it's filmed, not done live in studio -- but was nonetheless passed over by the networks in 1951. Beaumont would have to wait six more years, until Leave It To Beaver, to hit his personal jackpot.

Hugh Beaumont starring in this film might surprise many viewers today. After all, he's known to most as the sweet father of the Beaver on "Leave it to Beaver". However, before he appeared on this show, he appeared in many B-movies...many of which are crime films. He often played private detectives, though he sometimes played villains or cops...hardly the Ward Cleaver sorts of characters! Here in "Danger Zone" he plays a cheap private eye.

When the story begins, Dennis (Beaumont) is at an auction when a woman approaches him and begs him to be the highest bidder for an unopened suitcase. He agrees and wins it for $1000....a princely sum for 1951. But after buying it, the lady disappears and Dennis takes the case home. After opening it, he finds there's just a sax inside...and soon the losing bidder shows up to buy the sax. But before Dennis can make a deal, he gets slugged...and awakens much later. Why?? Why did the guy slug him and why did the lady insist he buy it?

Now all this sounds very interesting, right? Well, that's only HALF the movie. As it consisted of a couple TV episodes edited together to make a full-length film, there's a second story.

In this second part, Dennis is hired to use one of his boats to take some socialite to a party on a yacht anchored off shore. It's an odd job...and it's not surprising that just like the sax, there is MUCH more to the story...including murder and Dennis being left holding the bag!

The oddest thing for me isn't seeing Beaumont in such a role but seeing Eddie Brophy as "the Professor'...an overly erudite guy with a strong penchant for the bottle. Seeing and hearing him talking like some out of work Oxford professor was indeed odd, as he normally played a dopey New York hood or the like.

So is it good? Well, it's not bad but it also feels rushed. Stretching out each story into its own movie would have helped. I mostly recommend it because of its interest as a curio...evidence that Beaumont was more than just some nice-guy TV dad.

Hugh Beaumont makes his contribution to the Gumshoe Genre as wise cracking Charter Boat Operator / Private Investigator Dennis O'Brien. When the Charter Boat business is a little slow, O'brien likes to pick up a few extra bucks as a PI. Showing a greater penchant for witty repartee than character judgment and well grounded decision making, O'Brien finds himself at odds with an assortment of characters he meets during the course of the day.

Danger Zone is filmed as two separate stories combined into a feature length film. In Part One O'Brien is duped by a mysterious woman (Virginia Dale) into bidding on her behalf at auction for a suitcase. As it turns out she isn't the only one interested in the suitcase and it's contents. O'Brien is soon up to the lapels of his overcoat in larceny and murder. Part Two finds O'Brien, apparently none the wiser from his previous experience in Part One, bamboozled by a fellow detective (Tom Neal) into escorting a rich socialite to a party. O'Brien is offered a quick fifty bucks to play tag-along to a rich society dame for the evening. So what could go wrong here you ask? As it turns out plenty.The situation goes sideways when O'Brien is accused of murder by the obligatory hard-nosed police Lieutenant (Richard Travis). Fortunately there to assist O'Brien in his travails is his sidekick Prof. Frederick Simpson Schicker (Edward Brophy). Schicker a Runyonesque type character, given to drink and sesquipedalian lingo, keeps an ear out for the word on the street.

Released by Lippert Pictures, this was the first part of a three picture package, each filmed as two separate stories. Lippert was a creative organization, more so financially than artistically, that was able to assimilate name talent that had been cut from their contracts at major studios. Here Lippert filmed two stories that were to be later released as stand alone television episodes. However nothing beyond the original three movies were ever made and as fate would have it, Beaumont never became one of television's legendary detectives.

Danger Zone is a low budget double bill programmer and an oddly constructed one at that. As such it's easy to say "keep moving, nothing to see here" but despite the fact that it lacks the gravitas to be a feature film, it might have made a decent television series given the chance.