While not recalling any specifics, I do clearly remember watching this show as a child. Since then I have seen - and liked - Broderick Crawford in many movies including Bs and his academy award winning performance. He is just so solid with an interesting voice and delivery, and so unlikely looking to be a star of a television show. Given that this drama was only 25 minutes long, we're not talking about a lot of character development here. But we are talking about well- written stories and interesting narrative techniques. In this episode, the Highway Patrol is on the track of a vicious killer who broke out of prison after killing a guard. The killer, who is actually pretty smart, knows that there will be roadblocks out trying to trap him and he uses a couple of nasty strategies to avoid them. One fun thing about watching these old shows is recognizing an actor in a small part who later scores it big. In this case it was Paul Burke - he got second to last mention in the credits. At the end, Crawford introduces himself and asks the viewer to watch the show again next week.
7 Reviews
Real Police Drama, a Sad Story in the Series' Start
biorngm1 March 2019
Warning: Spoilers
A fair start to one of my favorite cop shows from the fifties. If the viewer keeps several things in mind the following one-hundred fifty-six episodes are well accepted; buy the premise, buy the program. It is ten-years from the end of WWII, television is a new media, limited programs on a few stations, the stories are written by authors used to movie scripts, not half-an-hour television dramas. They are writing shorts for the movie theaters but the programs are on TV. The acting can be all over the board, from Academy Award winning actors to just plain bad performances. The story must be accepted, professionally produced and well-acted. I believe those screen plays created for the Highway Patrol series were all right, after all, they were reenactment of real crimes portraying real criminals. The episodes to follow were gritty from this one until the end of the series. There was always a message within the plot, delivered by Broderick Crawford as Chief Dan Matthews. Yes, some stories were above others, such is life.
An evil convict will stop at nothing to escape the law after breaking out of prison. He slugs his accomplice-fellow-escapee, kills a highway patrolmen, dodges the law for a time until Dan Mathews shoots him dead, arresting his playmate, too.
An evil convict will stop at nothing to escape the law after breaking out of prison. He slugs his accomplice-fellow-escapee, kills a highway patrolmen, dodges the law for a time until Dan Mathews shoots him dead, arresting his playmate, too.
Top 1950's Police drama
gordonl5611 May 2011
Warning: Spoilers
This is the pilot episode for Broderick Crawford's HIGHWAY PATROL series. The series ran from 1955-59.
Crawford plays Dan Mathews. Mathews is the officer in charge of one of the units of, THE HIGHWAY PATROL.
In this episode, convicted murderer Gil Rankin has escaped from prison. He quickly steals a car and starts for the big city. A bad tire forces him to stop at a service station for a new tire. Needless to say that after the repairs are done he slugs the mechanic and hits the road. Broderick and his crew are out in full force with roadblocks and the whole song and dance.
Rankin figures the alarm must be out and decides he needs some new transport. Rankin parks the car off the highway and waits. Sure enough a Highway Patrol car pulls over to check on the vehicle. Rankin leaps out of the bushes and brains the cop with a tire iron. He takes the cop's uniform, gun and his car. Rankin parks on the side of the road and watches the traffic go by.
Spotting a school bus pass he takes off in pursuit. Rankin pulls the bus over and sticks his gun in the driver's face. Leaving the Patrol Car behind, Rankin has the driver head off for a nice and easy drive down the highway. There is a slight problem though for Rankin. There are two young children still on the bus. "Behave yourself or the bus driver will be killed" he tells them.
Rankin hides at the back of the bus as they come up to a Highway Patrol roadblock. The cop in charge knows the driver and waves them through.
While all this is happening, Crawford is one step behind trying to figure Rankin's next move. Then they get a break when the mother of the children calls in to say they never made it home. The boys in blue realize they had let the bus through and that Rankin must have been on board. Everyone dashes for their cars and the chase is on. In the mean time, Rankin has pulled over, pistol-butted the driver, and dumped him and the kids down a side road. He then hits a roadhouse up the highway to meet a contact for the final ride into the city.
Crawford spots the bus at the roadhouse and pulls in. Of course Rankin is not inclined to come peacefully. There is an exchange of gunfire before Rankin is cured of his reluctance in that area.
A straight up police procedural that is all tied up nicely in a 25- minute runtime.
The cast includes Paul Burke, Fritz Ford, Jay Douglas and Diane Brewster. The director was Herbert (I Was a Teenage Frankenstein) Storck and the d of p was Curt Fetters.
Crawford plays Dan Mathews. Mathews is the officer in charge of one of the units of, THE HIGHWAY PATROL.
In this episode, convicted murderer Gil Rankin has escaped from prison. He quickly steals a car and starts for the big city. A bad tire forces him to stop at a service station for a new tire. Needless to say that after the repairs are done he slugs the mechanic and hits the road. Broderick and his crew are out in full force with roadblocks and the whole song and dance.
Rankin figures the alarm must be out and decides he needs some new transport. Rankin parks the car off the highway and waits. Sure enough a Highway Patrol car pulls over to check on the vehicle. Rankin leaps out of the bushes and brains the cop with a tire iron. He takes the cop's uniform, gun and his car. Rankin parks on the side of the road and watches the traffic go by.
Spotting a school bus pass he takes off in pursuit. Rankin pulls the bus over and sticks his gun in the driver's face. Leaving the Patrol Car behind, Rankin has the driver head off for a nice and easy drive down the highway. There is a slight problem though for Rankin. There are two young children still on the bus. "Behave yourself or the bus driver will be killed" he tells them.
Rankin hides at the back of the bus as they come up to a Highway Patrol roadblock. The cop in charge knows the driver and waves them through.
While all this is happening, Crawford is one step behind trying to figure Rankin's next move. Then they get a break when the mother of the children calls in to say they never made it home. The boys in blue realize they had let the bus through and that Rankin must have been on board. Everyone dashes for their cars and the chase is on. In the mean time, Rankin has pulled over, pistol-butted the driver, and dumped him and the kids down a side road. He then hits a roadhouse up the highway to meet a contact for the final ride into the city.
Crawford spots the bus at the roadhouse and pulls in. Of course Rankin is not inclined to come peacefully. There is an exchange of gunfire before Rankin is cured of his reluctance in that area.
A straight up police procedural that is all tied up nicely in a 25- minute runtime.
The cast includes Paul Burke, Fritz Ford, Jay Douglas and Diane Brewster. The director was Herbert (I Was a Teenage Frankenstein) Storck and the d of p was Curt Fetters.
Great start of series
SanTanRand10 January 2013
In this first episode of Highway Patrol's premier season headquarters receives notice of an escape from a nearby prison. Chief Dan Mathews springs from his office and convincingly establishes that a wall map is to Dan Mathews what a chalkboard was to football coach Vince Lombardi. Immediately he takes to setting up roadblocks that a "kiddie car couldn't get through". When headquarters loses contact with an officer investigating an abandoned car used by the escapee, Mathews springs to the scene in his ever reliable Buick squad car from which he continues to take command of the manhunt. This clearly establishes him as more than a desk-bound-pencil-pushing crime fighting boss. The episode in a mere 30 minutes does well in establishing the viciousness of the escaped convict. From knocking out his injured partner to commandeering a school bus, this is a man worthy of Mathews' vigilant pursuit.
Good start to series, and 2 links to The Andy Griffith Show
FlushingCaps5 January 2022
Warning: Spoilers
This was the first episode of this series. Unlike the pilot episode (assuming this was, the first one shown is not always the pilot) of many series, this one seemed just like the rest of the series, a rather formulaic procedure where we see some vestige of a crime-in this case, two men having just escaped from a prison, with one already wounded as we opened (at least, it was the opening in the Me-TV version) and the other man killing his fellow escapee to keep from being slowed down in his escape attempt. At least, that's why I figure he killed him, there was nothing stated.
We follow the criminal, whose name was Ralph Neal, as he is soon stealing the car driven by an accomplice, and then drives that car into a service station because he got a flat tire. The attendant doesn't have a new tire to sell him cheaply, so Neal agrees to a new one that will cost $24. After it is put on-in ten minutes-he tells the attendant that he cannot pay for more than what a used tire would take. Can he go retrieve the rest from home? The attendant agrees, asking to see his driver's license. On being told that he also left that at home, the man then asks to see the registration inside the car.
Now other episodes and other shows established that in California the car registration was actually left on the steering column. Why Neal didn't just let the man see this info is a mystery. Instead, he got into the car, then KO's the mechanic instead of just letting him see the owner's info. Now Neal figures he needs to switch vehicles quickly. He parks outside town and waits nearby with the jack base from the car in his hand. (One reviewer says it's a tire iron, but that is definitely not what was shown.)
Now the attendant has phoned in to the highway patrol, where Dan is already tracking the suspected whereabouts of the escapee. Now he has more info and quickly orders road blocks everywhere, with his men on the lookout for the stolen vehicle identified by the license plate number. (Curiously, the license plate, shown clearly, has only the numbers and the one letter-there is no state motto, no expiration date, not even the name of the state on the plate.)
Neal is waiting for a cop to come along, spotting the stolen car. When one does, he carelessly goes up to the car without keeping his eyes all about for the escapee. He is conked from behind by the tire jack base and Neal then takes the trooper's uniform and patrol car. He decides to only drive it a few miles, pulling over a school bus and forcing the driver, at gun point, to drive him where he wants, despite the presence of two children on the bus-ages 10 and 7.
They run into a roadblock but the cop doesn't check the bus, only boards to talk to the driver and the kids without going to the back. At the road block, there were several police cars and officers. The driver, having been told by Neal that he already killed a cop today, might well figure that fate awaits him if he doesn't get away. He could have basically jumped outside the bus while the door was open and run to the other cops telling them about the man with the gun inside-figuring he wouldn't hurt the kids with all these policemen around. The cops would be inside the bus before he could get to the driver's seat to make any attempt to escape.
But the driver did nothing of the sort and after driving Neal a few more miles, he is ordered outside the bus. Just as he starts to leave, Neal KO's him with his gun, what they used to call "buffaloing." He then lets the kids leave and drives the bus away. Given the rural location at that point, there was no need to hit the driver, but we needed to be reminded of what a mean man he was.
Neal later has a rendezvous with another accomplice but before they get together, fast-action, fast-talking Dan Mathews, has arrived and winds up in a short gun battle, with-surprise, surprise-the good guy winning.
A smarter crook, would have just let the attendant see the car's registration and driven off-no suspicion of robbery or anything at that point, and figured he could stay away from roadblocks-they can't literally cover every road. Or, once he conked the gas station man, figured he had plenty of time to do the same. Once he got the police car, he could have used the radio to lure cops away from a given road block with false information and gotten clean away. Getting into the slow-moving, easy-to-spot school bus seems like the dumbest thing he did. As other reviews I've made of this series have stated-Mathews is greatly aided by smart criminals doing something stupid in almost every episode. A decent start to a good series-I score this one a 7.
One reviewer on IMDB got mixed up about which escapee was the lead villain. He identifies the man by the name of the other escapee. He was definitely called Ralph Neal. I remember because that is the identical name of another prison escapee from an episode of The Andy Griffith Show some 9 years later in the famous episode where Barney has a bloodhound he uses to help capture his "Ralph Neal."
I have another Andy Griffith connection with this episode: The two kids on the bus had character names of Maggie and Billy Peterson. Whenever Andy and Barney were visited by the Darling family, Briscoe's daughter Charlene, was played by actress Maggie Peterson.
We follow the criminal, whose name was Ralph Neal, as he is soon stealing the car driven by an accomplice, and then drives that car into a service station because he got a flat tire. The attendant doesn't have a new tire to sell him cheaply, so Neal agrees to a new one that will cost $24. After it is put on-in ten minutes-he tells the attendant that he cannot pay for more than what a used tire would take. Can he go retrieve the rest from home? The attendant agrees, asking to see his driver's license. On being told that he also left that at home, the man then asks to see the registration inside the car.
Now other episodes and other shows established that in California the car registration was actually left on the steering column. Why Neal didn't just let the man see this info is a mystery. Instead, he got into the car, then KO's the mechanic instead of just letting him see the owner's info. Now Neal figures he needs to switch vehicles quickly. He parks outside town and waits nearby with the jack base from the car in his hand. (One reviewer says it's a tire iron, but that is definitely not what was shown.)
Now the attendant has phoned in to the highway patrol, where Dan is already tracking the suspected whereabouts of the escapee. Now he has more info and quickly orders road blocks everywhere, with his men on the lookout for the stolen vehicle identified by the license plate number. (Curiously, the license plate, shown clearly, has only the numbers and the one letter-there is no state motto, no expiration date, not even the name of the state on the plate.)
Neal is waiting for a cop to come along, spotting the stolen car. When one does, he carelessly goes up to the car without keeping his eyes all about for the escapee. He is conked from behind by the tire jack base and Neal then takes the trooper's uniform and patrol car. He decides to only drive it a few miles, pulling over a school bus and forcing the driver, at gun point, to drive him where he wants, despite the presence of two children on the bus-ages 10 and 7.
They run into a roadblock but the cop doesn't check the bus, only boards to talk to the driver and the kids without going to the back. At the road block, there were several police cars and officers. The driver, having been told by Neal that he already killed a cop today, might well figure that fate awaits him if he doesn't get away. He could have basically jumped outside the bus while the door was open and run to the other cops telling them about the man with the gun inside-figuring he wouldn't hurt the kids with all these policemen around. The cops would be inside the bus before he could get to the driver's seat to make any attempt to escape.
But the driver did nothing of the sort and after driving Neal a few more miles, he is ordered outside the bus. Just as he starts to leave, Neal KO's him with his gun, what they used to call "buffaloing." He then lets the kids leave and drives the bus away. Given the rural location at that point, there was no need to hit the driver, but we needed to be reminded of what a mean man he was.
Neal later has a rendezvous with another accomplice but before they get together, fast-action, fast-talking Dan Mathews, has arrived and winds up in a short gun battle, with-surprise, surprise-the good guy winning.
A smarter crook, would have just let the attendant see the car's registration and driven off-no suspicion of robbery or anything at that point, and figured he could stay away from roadblocks-they can't literally cover every road. Or, once he conked the gas station man, figured he had plenty of time to do the same. Once he got the police car, he could have used the radio to lure cops away from a given road block with false information and gotten clean away. Getting into the slow-moving, easy-to-spot school bus seems like the dumbest thing he did. As other reviews I've made of this series have stated-Mathews is greatly aided by smart criminals doing something stupid in almost every episode. A decent start to a good series-I score this one a 7.
One reviewer on IMDB got mixed up about which escapee was the lead villain. He identifies the man by the name of the other escapee. He was definitely called Ralph Neal. I remember because that is the identical name of another prison escapee from an episode of The Andy Griffith Show some 9 years later in the famous episode where Barney has a bloodhound he uses to help capture his "Ralph Neal."
I have another Andy Griffith connection with this episode: The two kids on the bus had character names of Maggie and Billy Peterson. Whenever Andy and Barney were visited by the Darling family, Briscoe's daughter Charlene, was played by actress Maggie Peterson.
Highway Patrol starts out with a bang
AlsExGal21 April 2024
This first episode of the 50s series has the Highway Patrol trying to capture a man who broke out of prison. He's ruthless and clever, stealing and then abandoning vehicles as he goes. He steals a car, then a police car badly injuring the cop who drove it, and then uses the police car to hijack a school bus which he figures will be less suspect.
The interesting thing about this episode is that although the escapee does pretty bad violence in a couple of scenes, the actual violence being done to the people is not shown. Nor is the injured person shown post violence. I wonder if this was due to some type of morals code at this particular point in television such that explicit violence, even though it is just acting, could not be shown.
Broderick Crawford plays the hands-on head of the Highway Patrol, directing the investigation and manhunt. Although I doubt the head of such an outfit would be out in the field chasing down suspects, no audience is going to stick around for a show where Crawford, star of stage and screen, spends the entire show filling out reports.
For this first show, Broderick Crawford comes out at the end to invite the audience to tune in next week.
The interesting thing about this episode is that although the escapee does pretty bad violence in a couple of scenes, the actual violence being done to the people is not shown. Nor is the injured person shown post violence. I wonder if this was due to some type of morals code at this particular point in television such that explicit violence, even though it is just acting, could not be shown.
Broderick Crawford plays the hands-on head of the Highway Patrol, directing the investigation and manhunt. Although I doubt the head of such an outfit would be out in the field chasing down suspects, no audience is going to stick around for a show where Crawford, star of stage and screen, spends the entire show filling out reports.
For this first show, Broderick Crawford comes out at the end to invite the audience to tune in next week.
too rural
sandcrab2773 November 2020
Nearly every episode is conducted in really rural settings and often on dirt roads ... diners that are out of the way or farms ... armored cars are merely panel trucks .. and the cops microphones are always laying on the car seat reachable through an open window rather than on the dash mounted clip ... dialogue was rapid fire terse and concise ... if the highway patrol hq was in sacramento, you wouldn't know it by this show
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
