Tuesday's Overlooked Films: HIGHWAY DRAGNET starring Richard Conte

 

This1954 car chase film noir is a sturdy entry in the genre featuring two 1950s Hollywood stars I enjoy watching perform: Richard Conte and Joan Bennett. Neither quite ever made it to the A-list, but they were talented nonetheless. A young, perky Wanda Hendrix once married to the troubled war hero/acxtor Audie Murphy rounds out the leading cast. Conte plays a Marine sergeant discharged after the Korean War and stops off on his trip west at a Las Vegas tavern. He runs into a bar floozy and buys her a drink. Cut to the next morning, and she's been murdered, and Conte is picked up by the local cops and charged for it. Conte manages to escape and finds Bennett and Hendrix stalled by their car on the desert highway. Bennett is a rather cynical high fashion photographer and Hendrix plays her plucky assistant. The rest of the story has the three of them eluding the cops both in Nevada and later California. Conte has a .45 that persuades the ladies to go along with him until he can clear his name. I liked the snappy dialgoue (Roger Corman's first sold film script), brisk pace, and desert setting. Ida Lupino's somewhat similar film noir The Hitch-hiker is a better made abd better known movie, but Conte keeps this flick edgy enough so I found it to be entertaining. Other viewers have rated it low, but I like Corman, Conte, Bennett, so I can easily overlook and even excuse the obvious flaws.