The California Kid

The California Kid
"The California Kid" movie poster
Directed by	Richard T. Heffron
Produced by	Howie Horwitz Paul Mason
Written by	Richard Compton
Starring	Martin Sheen Vic Morrow Michelle Phillips Nick Nolte Gary Morgan Fredric Downs Janit Baldwin
Music by	Luchi De Jesus Hal Mooney
Cinematography	Terry K. Meade
Edited by	Robert F. Shugrue Richard Belding
Distributed by	Universal Studios
Release dates	September 25, 1974 (1974-09-25)
Running time	75 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1,000,000

The California Kid is a 1974 TV movie starring Martin Sheen, Vic Morrow, Nick Nolte, Michelle Phillips, Gary Morgan, and Janit Baldwin.

Plot

The story takes place in 1958, and involves a town, Clarksburg, California, with a famous speed trap, in which a disturbed Sheriff Roy Childress (Vic Morrow), whose wife and daughter were killed by a speeder, turns bad, with a habit of deliberately punishing speeders by pushing their cars off the mountain highway in his 1957 Plymouth Belvedere.

Two Navy sailors on leave (one portrayed by Sheen's younger brother, Joe Estevez), speeding to get back to base on time in a 1951 Ford Custom, are pushed off to their deaths by the sheriff. Soon after, a stranger arrives, driving a hot rodded black 1934 Ford three-window coupe. He provokes Sheriff Childress into giving him a speeding ticket on purpose, establishes his credentials with the sheriff as a hot rodder and potential speed maniac, with an explicit reference to the 3-window's tested speed. He pays the ticket in front of Judge J.A. Hooker (Frederic Downs), and it is revealed he is Michael McCord (Martin Sheen), older brother of one of the sailors.

Believing his brother's death was no accident, he does his own investigating, with the help of Maggie (Michelle Phillips). He finds a stripped bumper from his brother's Ford at the impound yard, dented as if by pushbars. He checks out the lay of the land. Knowing how his brother was killed, he goes out to the Curve, testing its limits.

When Lyle Stafford (Gary Morgan), the younger brother of the town's auto mechanic Buzz Stafford (Nick Nolte) is killed and his girlfriend Sissy (Janit Baldwin) badly injured by the sheriff after the duo go for a drive in a 1955 Mercury, McCord sees the pushbars on the sheriff's car. When Buzz wants to kill the sheriff for revenge, McCord persuades him not to. Then the sheriff tries to run McCord out of town, and the stage is set for the climactic duel.

McCord then runs the speed trap, challenging the sheriff, who tries to run him off the road. McCord is ready, knowing his car's limits for the curve, and the sheriff is a victim of his own obsession, going too fast to make the deadly turn. He drives off the cliff, while McCord manages to stop in the sand.

Cast

Replica of a 1960 Fury, typical of the film's interceptor.

External links

• The California Kid at the Internet Movie Database
• The California Kid at AllMovie