HIGHWAY DRAGNET (1954)

I have a great deal of affection for Poverty Row film noir, but more often than not I wish big stars would treat them like Kryptonite. 1954’s Highway Dragnet is a case in point. Richard Conte is reliable as ever, but Joan Bennett is done a great disservice, and devotees of hers would do well to stay as far away from this as she should have.


The film’s “man on the run” premise is routine, if not cliché, but if so it’s the sort of cliché that got that way because it’s such great film fodder. Conte’s character has just drummed out of the Marine Corps after a rough stint toting a flamethrower up and down hills in Korea. With a few bucks in his pocket and plenty of time on his hands he heads for the Vegas strip for a few laughs with a pal (who we oddly never see or meet). They are doing the town before heading west to renovate Conte’s dilapidated home on California’s Salton Sea. While waiting to rendezvous with his buddy, Conte grows frustrated with the penny slots and enters the casino bar — wood-paneled like a basement rec room and strewn with an array of lounge lizards and greasy pompadours. Conte spots the lone empty stool and falls into it, right beside a platinum blonde, Mary Beth Hughes, dolled up but cheap-looking, and already two sheets to the wind. The stage is set for the best sequence in Highway Dragnet — too bad it happens so early on.


Bar scenes are a useful narrative device for filmmaking on the cheap, a thus a noir staple. That resonates with me, as I spent more than a decade standing at the doors of shitty bars with my arms crossed, trying to look like a tough guy, and occasionally having to be one. I’ve seen many unpleasant things in the thousands of hours I’ve spent in barrooms, and I have an understanding of, and maybe even some affection for the sad souls whose lives rot away on a barstool — perhaps that’s why I’m so drawn to the losers that populate crime films. The barroom represents a convenient way to place two characters on a collision course, particularly those of the opposite sex. What better symbolizes the seedy, urban landscape than the bar? What could be a more appropriate signifier of recklessness, danger, and the allure of easy sex? What better place to be noticed, or to go unnoticed; to conduct nefarious business, or an illicit affair? And then there’s the alcohol itself, our most expedient gateway to sex, violence, and oblivion — in life, as in art. Bars are used often to such purpose in film noir, so it’s hardly surprising that Highway Dragnet, a 70-minute chase picture, opens with a man and a woman sparring over drinks. The scene here is brief and spectacular (yes, spectacular), so I’m going to slobber over it. If you are anxious for a summary, just go watch the movie — it’s available for free and plenty short enough.


The scene gets moving after Conte does the polite thing and offers Hughes a drink in exchange for the vacant seat, currently occupied by her handbag. She hungrily accepts, but not before making a floozy’s feint at good-girl morality: “I’m not here for that.” Sure she is. They discuss their pasts, how they each arrived at the then-and-now, with both actors coming over as only casually interested in one another, or maybe scrupulously disinterested. Here are two performers who understand the way that life-hardened souls — no longer young — interact at the bar. Men and women let their guards down over drinks, sitting side-by-side instead of across from one another. They relax when looking up doesn’t mean looking at, and lighting a cigarette has more to do with connecting than it does with foreplay. Conte and Hughes intuit all of this, and are able to imbue their performances a healthy dose of truth. This is why we love B-pictures folks: sometimes, in those glimpses of human interaction that rise to a surface unfettered with glamour, these cheap movies get it exactly right.


Hughes is first-rate, playing tipsy just right, her head not quite steady as she smiles in Conte’s direction, her brassiere showing under her dress as she shifts back and forth on her bar stool. They share the easy banter of those who realize that sex is either impossible or inevitable, but no matter what there isn’t any doubt or any in between. Their certainty is what makes this scene so good: Hughes thinks she’s hooked him while Conte knows he has other plans. She tells him she’s an ex-fashion model — her glossy is hanging on the wall, just over there, on your right — and Conte blunders, telling her, “Hey, you were really beautiful then.” There are few creatures more perilous than the woman sitting alone at the bar: her closely guarded vulnerability makes her dangerous, and Hughes reacts like a classic mad drunk: she gets aggressive. Conte grabs her, pinning her arms behind back, and to his surprise she smiles — finally getting what she wanted so desperately the whole time: human contact. Hard or soft, it doesn’t matter. Her body relaxes and she leans into a kiss, followed by the fade out.


In the harsh light of desert mornings and hangovers, we find Conte the following day at a wind-swept crossroads trying to thumb his way west. Too bad for him the first car by is laden to its springs with law enforcement, not surprisingly on the lookout for our boy. A certain platinum blonde is laying blue-in-the-face on the floor of her bungalow, and everyone at the bar eyeballed her and Conte’s quarrel. The uniforms put him in bracelets and haul him to the scene of the crime, where the script contrives to make Conte look guilty as hell. For the sorts of reasons that only make sense on Poverty Row he has a bloody shirt in his suitcase, and when the detectives check his alibi by trying to call the phantom buddy’s hotel, Conte suddenly recalls that the man is on a “top secret” assignment and isn’t traveling under his real name. Why the film subjects us to this is unclear, there’s never a moment where we believe Conte to be guilty — he’s got a Silver Star for Pete’s sake — though it’s possible the writers want to keep us guessing. After all this is a picture with four producers and six credited writers (including Roger Corman), so some confusion is understandable. (We never do get an explanation for the bloody shirt.) With his chances at freedom fading fast, Conte engineers a half-assed display of little guy judo and busts out. He dives into one of the idling prowl cars and skedaddles. At this point the film is only ten minutes old.



The rest of the picture takes place on the run. Conte dumps his khakis and the police car, and then stumbles upon two women broken down by the side of the highway. Joan Bennett is a magazine photographer of some reputation; Wanda Hendrix (you might know her from Ride the Pink Horse) is her pretty model. Conte gets their convertible turning over and the trio hit the road together. The remaining reels are concerned with a series of near misses at various roadblocks and diners — all full of donut chomping cops — and the group dynamic when the girls finally discover Conte is a murder suspect. Eventually he’s compelled to hold them in check with his Colt automatic, but as the minutes go by the vivacious (and horny!) Hendrix is more and more in his corner, while Bennett has a different agenda. There are a few twists and turns along the way, though nothing, not even the film’s payoff, will come as a big surprise. What is surprising, however, is poor Joan Bennett.


Bennett was still a household name in 1954, though it’s plenty obvious she was in career hell, having left the studios in the forties for a freelance career, she was now a decade past the vibrant sexuality of Scarlet Street and the respectable stability of Dark Shadows wasn’t yet on her horizon. Like Barbara Stanwyck she had transitioned to mature roles, having scored with critics as the determined mother in The Reckless Moment and then successfully partnered Spencer Tracy in the highly commercial Father of the Bride pictures. But by the mid-fifties the forty-something’s motion picture career was in purgatory. She looks, and it’s painful to write this, awful. Severe and shrill, she seems angry to even be in the picture, forced to play second fiddle to someone as impossibly young and perky as Wanda Hendrix — and if the bright desert sun loves Hendrix it hates Bennett. Her role is important, but Highway Dragnet’s final scene is excruciating. It’s the sort of thing that must have pained Bennett in the years that followed, and were she still with us she’d undoubtedly be upset that this film has become available.


Highway Dragnet is a solid B-thriller, a thematic film noir with very little style (cinematographer John Martin only did westerns). It has some cringe-inducing moments — unmistakably Poverty Row — but should still be of interest to noir enthusiasts. Just do me a favor and give the woman in the window a break. She deserves it.


Highway Dragnet (1954)

Director: Nathan Juran
Producer: Roger Corman, Jack Jungmeyer, and A. Robert Nunes
Story: U.S. Anderson and Roger Corman
Screenplay: Herb Meadow and Jerome Udlum
Cinematography: John J. Martin
Starring: Dick Conte, Joan Bennett, and Wanda Hendrix
Released by: Allied Artists
Running time: 70 minutes