The crash of a small aircraft offers Friday and Gannon an opportunity. Inside the plane officers discover marijuana and heroin with a total street value over a million. If they can find the ... Read allThe crash of a small aircraft offers Friday and Gannon an opportunity. Inside the plane officers discover marijuana and heroin with a total street value over a million. If they can find the pilot, and get the drop location from him, they may be able to follow the chain of crimina... Read allThe crash of a small aircraft offers Friday and Gannon an opportunity. Inside the plane officers discover marijuana and heroin with a total street value over a million. If they can find the pilot, and get the drop location from him, they may be able to follow the chain of criminals to the very top. But they only have five hours: after that the criminals will realize t... Read all
- Fred Robertson
- (as Steve Dunne)
- Reporter
- (uncredited)
- Main Title Announcer
- (voice)
- (uncredited)
- Reporter
- (uncredited)
- Suspect
- (uncredited)
- Narrator
- (voice)
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- David H. Vowell
- Jack Webb(uncredited)
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaActing debut of Jaws star Lorraine Gary.
- GoofsSgt. Friday refers to the FAA as the "Federal Aviation Agency". The actual name is the "Federal Aviation Administration", as has been so since it's creation in 1958.
- Quotes
Peter Witmer: [Friday has made motions to Shanklin to empty his pockets; Shanklin does so] I don't see why you don't leave him alone. You don't have to roust the poor guy. He can't hear and he can't talk and you're treating him like a bum!
Sergeant Joe Friday: [Friday finds a slip of paper in Shanklin's wallet and reads it. He angrily slams Shanklin's wallet onto the table] I'm gonna ask you once more: Who did you pick the stuff up for?
Peter Witmer: He couldn't tell you if he wanted to!
Sergeant Joe Friday: This says he can! It's a receipt from a music store for two phonograph records.
[to Shanklin]
Sergeant Joe Friday: Now what do you do, Shanklin - sit there and watch the labels go around? Come on - who are you and Witmer working for?
Wallace Shanklin: I told you it would never work!
Peter Witmer: You stupid jerk!
Sergeant Joe Friday: Let's have it!
Wallace Shanklin: They told me if I was ever picked up to play deaf and dumb and since I didn't have nothing on file they could get me off!
Sergeant Joe Friday: All right, who's the big man?
Wallace Shanklin: I'm gonna tell him!
Peter Witmer: You do that, fink, and I wouldn't give you eight cents for your future!
Sergeant Joe Friday: That's enough of that! Come on, Shanklin!
Wallace Shanklin: The guy you want is Sal Romero. He's the one we picked the stuff up for!
Peter Witmer: You really are stupid, aren't you?
Wallace Shanklin: Why do you say that?
Peter Witmer: You just didn't think!
Wallace Shanklin: What do you mean?
Peter Witmer: Why didn't you tell him you bought the records for a friend?
[Witmer pauses and muses over his own stupid remark]
Big contraband stakes in the San Fernando Valley as "The Big Shipment" finds Friday and Gannon setting out in the middle of the night to track down the pilot and to whom he was supposed to deliver the drugs. David Vowell's taut, (mostly) credible script steers the pair down the unenviable path of knocking on doors in the dead of night, with the urgency being, according to the (convenient) instructions on the heroin envelope that call for a 5 AM pickup but specify only "the same place as last time" as the pickup location, the opportunity to bust a big fish provided they can discern where that "same place as last time" is. (We also learn that Gannon can at least read Spanish since that is the language of the writing.)
As "Dragnet" is the epitome of the police procedural, we see Friday and Gannon, having talked to the owner of the rented Cessna (Stephen Dunne) and, after some sleuthing and deducing, the estranged wife (Lorraine Gary) of the man who rented it, bust in on Jerry Frank (Fred Vincent), a Vietnam vet who lost a leg in the war (thus the prosthetic leg and the limp) and who runs drugs for the thrill of it (along with the money, presumably)--and who now might receive the thrill of being killed by his connection for not delivering the very expensive goods. So, of course, he divulges where he was supposed to leave the drugs for the pickup.
What follows is the bust that snares the pair (Julian Burton, John Sebastian (the actor, not the musician)) making the pickup, which spirals into a serio-comic conclusion, capped by a hilarious line by Jack Webb, that tests the promise of a "true story" with its seeming absurdity, but truth can be stranger than fiction, and criminals are known to try the strangest things sometimes. You just might not look at the label on an LP record the same way again.
But what doesn't follow is this: Webb's biggest bugbear are illegal drugs. "The Big Shipment" has an entire planeload of drugs, enough to immobilize a few city blocks of crazed addicts at least--and where is Joe Friday's outrage? Where is the icy, caustic lecture about destroying the morals of the nation?
These guys are facilitating the corruption of impressionable youths on a grand scale, and not one scathing word from Friday, not one cutting remark, not even a reference to the gateway drug theory that "sooner or later, one of those kids high on reefer is going to get curious about that white powder, and the next thing you know, he's bought himself a hundred dollar a day horse habit--and, Mister, you're the one who helped him buy it and maybe even his overdose death," followed by that four-note musical curtain ringing down around the perp.
(Recite to the cadence of the "Dragnet" "gotcha" tune): "Where's the outrage? Where's the outrage, Joe?"
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
- darryl-tahirali
- Apr 26, 2023