Squad Car isn't quite as terrible as "chrisparson82" describes, and I'm honestly grateful for having the opportunity to see it, but neither is it worth the $19.98 SRP Fox is asking.

The movie was shot flat for widescreen cropping, but Fox's video transfer is incorrectly 4:3 full-frame. Oddly though, it looks like a newish transfer.

Filmed on location in and around Phoenix, the picture opens with airplane mechanic Dell Taylor (Norman MacDonald) stalked and eventually riddled with bullets by an unseen assailant armed a Tommy gun. Dell is gunned down while in a phone booth, desperately trying to place a call. Lt. Beck (Paul Bryar) questions Jay Reinhart (Don Marlowe), owner of the crop-dusting business that employed Dell. Beck suspects Reinhart is connected to the murder, but he claims he was with his girlfriend, swimming instructor Jeanne Haggerty (Lyn Moore), at the time of the shooting.

As Treasury Department agents, working a parallel investigation, link Dell to a counterfeit money distribution racket, Beck questions Dell's girl, busty, slightly over-the-hill nightclub singer Cameo Kincaid (top-billed Vici Raaf), who searches Dell's apartment for his stash of fake bills.

Elsewhere, the ringleader of the counterfeiting scam, Manfried Stahl (Jack Harris), orders a by-this-time disillusioned Reinhart to make one last flight to Mexico to pick up a huge shipment of the funny money. Reinhart begs off until Stahl threatens Jeanne.

Squad Car has all the earmarks of a picture financed by a wealthy Phoenix businessman with Hollywood aspirations. Producer-director Ed Leftwich has no other credits; there are no sets, only the use of real locations (not necessarily a bad thing, as reader Sergei Hasenecz points out); and the cast includes several obviously non-professional actors. Co-writer Scott Flohr's only solo writing credit known to the IMDb is a 1960 episode of M Squad, while with co-writer E.M. Parsons Flohr wrote a Sea Hunt soon after. Parsons was pretty busy following that assignment, writing episodes of Bonanza, The Virginian and whatnot, but his writing career must have been a fluke: Though past 60, Squad Car was nearly his first writing credit, and he seems to have quit altogether after he turned 65. (Parsons died in 1970, at 71.)

The movie is partly an overcooked noir, but mostly resembles a double-length episode of Highway Patrol. Paul Bryar, as Lt. Beck, is very much a Broderick Crawford type who often played cops, guards, desk sergeants, sheriffs, and judges. He even turns up in Highway Patrol's pilot.

Furthering underscoring the connection, Squad Car is narrated by Art Gilmore, who likewise narrated Highway Patrol in the same, exact style. Neither the IMDb nor Turner Classic Movies credit Gilmore, but that's unmistakably his voice.

Bryar, in what undoubtedly was the biggest role of his film career, is actually pretty good as the craggy-faced cop. Top-billed Vici Raaf had a busy schedule playing similar floozy-type parts on TV shows like Johnny Staccato, M Squad, The Lineup, Dragnet, etc. and at the time appeared frequently on The Red Skelton Hour. Don Marlowe had a spottier career, with tiny, often uncredited bits. He claimed to have played "Porky" in the Our Gang comedies but apparently didn't, and some of his other IMDb credits are suspect.

Lyn (or Lynn) Moore, as Reinhart's girl, clearly is no actress. Throughout the film she maintains a frozen, deer-caught-in-the-headlights wide-eyed stiffness, and her entire performance is plainly dubbed by another woman. Amusingly, the IMDb lists one other credit for Moore, a small part in the 1968 British film of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's mind-boggling to think of this Lyn Moore thesping alongside the likes of Diana Rigg, Helen Mirren, and Judi Dench, but who knows? I'd like to think Moore got the acting bug appearing in Squad Car, packed her bags, high-tailed it out of Phoenix, joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and lived happily ever after.

The movie is otherwise quite ordinary, production values-wise resembling a typical location-heavy Highway Patrol: professional-looking but cheap, probably $100,000 or less.

Squad Car does offer one unintentionally hilarious moment in which Reinhart comes off as the worst boyfriend in the history of motion pictures. (Mild Spoilers) In the last act, Cameo shoots Jeanne at point-blank range, which at first appears to be a particularly cold-blooded murder. However, while Reinhart is busy being questioned by Lt. Beck at Reinhart's office, he receives a phone call from Jeanne, she telling him that Cameo just shot her. "We'll send somebody over," Reinhart replies, and then simply hangs up. Reinhart then joins Beck as they race to intercept Cameo and Stahl before they leave the country. Reinhart never asks Jeanne if she's okay, where she was shot, nuthin', nor does he express even mild concern that his girlfriend is lying in a pool of her own blood somewhere.

Video & Audio

The credit blocking for Squad Car leaves no doubt that the film was formatted for at least 1.66:1 widescreen but the otherwise solid video transfer is 1.33:1 full frame. The results aren't too bad, though the shadow of a microphone boom is visible in at least one shot. The mono audio, English only with no alternate audio options or subtitles, is fine, and the disc is all-region. No Extra Features.

Parting Thoughts

Those like me intrigued by cinematic flotsam and jetsam like this might find Squad Car marginally interesting. Otherwise, Rent It.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His credits include film history books, DVD and Blu-ray audio commentaries and special features.