***Out In The 1950s C-Film Noir Night- Radar Patrol

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

Radar Patrol (not Radar Patrol vs. Sky King), 1951  

In the beginning was …radar. At least by the number of times the word was used and its glories acclaimed in the film under review, uh, Radar Patrol, that appears to be the case. Call me jaded by the vast increase in technology and wizardry in my lifetime but I could not get a head of steam worked up about the subject of radar and all of its practical uses from fishing to police detection. The latter of course the theme driving this effort. I mentioned in recently reviewing some B-film noir efforts that there were subtle gradations in that B category. This film is a notch below that.  Here is why.

This standard police procedural starts with the good guys touting the virtues of radar and how the of use of it could help fight crime. Fight crime in the red scare, Cold War early 1950s so the criminal activity has a sinister national security edge to it. That edge concerns the uses of the then fairly recently discovered uses for atomic material. Naturally anybody who had quantities of that available would find a ready market, legal or illegal. Here the illegal comes into play. A gang of ne’er-do-wells hijacks a van carrying atomic material. (By the way no effort was made to encase the material or have the handlers protected by suits they just transported the stuff in an old time van like it was boxes of books or something.) The hijacked material was hidden away in a barn until it can be exported on a yacht owned by the ringleader of the operation.

Of course once the officers of the radar patrol get on the case that gang’s days are numbered. First they foil a clean getaway and netted one of the robbers by the use of, well, radar to track the miscreants. Then they foiled a small test transport by the gang using, oh well, yes, radar. Then they blew the case wide open using a helicopter equipped with, let’s see, radar and they thus had saved the sacred material from the bad guys, done a good day’s work, and enhanced national security. And for their efforts the government has upped their budget in order to buy more, yes again, radar. See C what I mean.