Excerpted from Pat Ganahl’s column “Roddin’ at Random”.
Logo and excerpt used with permission.
I don’t have to tell you the story of The California Kid. It’s the made-for-TV movie that aired in September 1974, starring Martin Sheen, Vic Morrow, Michelle Phillips, and a young Nick Nolte, about a sheriff whose wife and daughter had been killed by a hit-and-run driver on the Main St. of their small SoCal town (“Clarksberg”) and therefore turns it into a notorious speed trap where he arrests drivers going a few miles over the speed limit, but also chases speeders on the twisty mountain highway outside town in his hopped-up ’57 Plymouth cop car with two large push-bars on the front, sending more than a few to their deaths on one tight curve at the edge of a steep cliff.
The movie opens with two young sailors in a white ’51 Ford coupe speeding down this highway trying to make it back to the base on time. Just as they pass through a tunnel on the 2-lane road, Sheriff Roy pulls out of his hiding spot in his blue-and-white Plymouth, bright red gumball twirling on the roof, in the first of several tire-screeching car chases, before nerfing the Ford off the road at the “Slow to 30 Dangerous Curve” and they, like others, tumble down the hill to their deaths. The sheriff backs up, gets out, stands at the cliff’s edge, hands on hips, and shakes his head.
Read the full column HERE
