A car pulls up to one of those diners in the middle of nowhere and a man and woman get out and enter the diner. As soon as they walk inside, a man with a mask tells them from behind to go sit at a table on the side.
He points his gun at the diner operator, who is standing about a foot away, but instead of the usual-"Open the cash register and put the money in this bag" line, the robber awkwardly reaches around the machine, pushes a button and the drawer opens. He tries to reach around to grab money from one of the bins and the diner man reaches out to grab the man's gun.
Of course it goes off, killing the diner owner. In the brief struggle, the man's mask comes off. The young couple immediately start pleading for their lives, insisting they won't say a thing. The robber asks their names-Carl and Jennifer Stone, then demands the man's wallet.
The robber says he can't take any chances but before he pulls the trigger, a delivery truck pulls up to the diner, with that man going to the side door. So the robber/killer says, "Your luck just changed, Get out of here." He promises that if they say anything to the cops, "I'll come looking for you."
So with the delivery man knocking at the locked back door, both witnesses and robber pull away in the respective vehicles. Our robber goes to talk to a man we later learn is his brother who knows about his brother's "occupation." He slaps him for letting the witnesses go. He tells him to go set up his alibi and he will go after the witnesses.
Dan is now at the scene of the robbery/murder and he and William Boyett, who is Sergeant Williams in this one, observe foot prints and tire tracks in the dirt parking lot-two sets only, apparently the diner does little business-and the boys in the lab do the most amazing thing. They come up with descriptions of the people-three of them, in far more detail than anything I ever saw on Dragnet, or read about in The Hardy Boys. Everything but the color of the woman's dress they learned from shoe prints. While one shoe print being a woman's shoes is understandable, they've got the suspects (thank God we still had that word then, I detest this "person of interest" we hear today) down to a specific weight and height-height to a half an inch. I do believe that measuring the length of one's stride does not precisely determine someone's height because any two people of matching height may take shorter or longer strides, even if in the same health and of the same age.
Back at the hotel, the woman is packing in the room. Her husband makes an anonymous phone call to Mathews-funny how they always get right through to the Dan the man, the policeman who is so much ready for action that he is shown in this one sitting at a desk with his hat on. He gives Dan a precise description of the robber AND reports his license number. So while rushing out of the place in fear of his life, with his newlywed wife, Carl somehow had time to look at and memorize that license plate. From the action we saw earlier, he backed up that car and zipped out of there as fast as he could.
Carl returns to the room and tells Jennifer "the (motel) bill's been paid." Lucky for him when the thief took his wallet and money he had spare money in another pocket, I guess.
The couple start for, home we guess, but stop on the roadside to debate whether they should go to the police. In fear, Jennifer tells him to just go ahead. She expresses worry that if the robber doesn't get them, one of his friends will.
Again I question the script. A lone gunman robs a diner, promises the couple that he will get them-never mentions any "friends" yet this is Jennifer's specific fear. Robbing a diner doesn't get you the kind of dough you'd care to share with any "friends"-especially if you did all the work and they weren't even at the scene. It is totally illogical for her to assume he had any friends who would know anything about him committing robberies.
Of course, the robber's brother, closes up his car repair shop to go hunting for the couple so he can do what his brother should have done-kill them. He goes straight to their motel and for a few bucks gets the clerk to tell him in which direction they drove. Lucky for him the clerk noticed. Mathews did not have the name provided like the bad guy did (they had told his brother where they were staying, which also seemed odd. At the diner, I might have given him my correct name, but would have lied and said I was headed east but the last place we stayed we checked out of.) but he does get to the same motel and the clerk gives him the same information, telling him someone else asked a while ago about that couple.
So the couple, the bad guy brother and Dan are all zipping down the highway, no towns in sight, and they are amazingly close together. From what we saw, the Stones should have had at least a 15-minute head start.
When the bad guy, Pete Norton, sees their car far ahead, instead of coming up and forcing them off the road, he begins firing from some distance away with his revolver. Carl swerves on hearing a bullet but the car is apparently not hit. After a couple of more shots, he pulls over by a ravine, telling Jennifer to run. They both go down to hide in the huge pipe beneath the highway.
Norton pulls up right behind them, goes down the hill and calls for Stone. Carl comes out with his hands up. As Norton asks where his wife is and he says he doesn't know, here comes ol' Jennifer from the culvert calling for Carl. Let's understand this: She was so much in fear for their lives from the robber's "friends" that she insisted they drive away. Now far down the highway they are shot at. Her husband tells her to run but instead of doing so, she heads back toward him while a bad guy is pointing a gun at Carl.
I would have thought she'd be frantically running away from the car, even though there seemed to be nothing in the area but desolate desert. Of course Dan pulls up right after the others and saves the day.
That holdup scene was dreadfully staged. Standing behind a cash register, it is awkward to reach around to grab bills out of the various slots in the tray. All we saw him grab was the 20s, or the slot on the cashier's left. Why not have the diner man take money from all the slots. And this would make it easier to keep him from trying for the gun.
Given what food cost in those days at such a place, there probably was as much or more money in $1 bills than in 20s. As we saw it, there were at least ten bills in that 20's slot. In those days, if you cashed a check for $80 at the bank, unless you asked specifically for certain bills, you would likely be given two 20s, three 10s, and two 5s. Why would a rural diner have ANY twenties in their till at the start of the day, let alone ten or more? A construction crew foreman could have brought in five of his workers, paid for all six meals with a single 20. Later on in the day, the till MIGHT have had a few 20s, quite possibly none. But at the start of the day, the diner man would have only put money in necessary to give change to his customers. The bigger stash would be in a cash box or safe, none of which were mentioned.
I really couldn't get over Carl Stone, knowing the guy behind wants to kill him and Jennifer, after a few missed shots at their car, just pulling over so they could run across the open desert. Why not speed up and try to drive away to some town, maybe a police station? Instead, pull over and trying to run away seems like the quickest way to die. When Pete leads them both beneath the road, he tells them he only has one bullet left. Gee, there's a clever man. He uses all but one bullet to shoot at the car from a distance, leaving him without enough bullets to do the simple job he wants to do.
One last complaint: Two people who saw a man get killed are racing away in fear of their lives. Why then is the title singular-"Frightened Witness"? I'll be generous and give this one a 3. It would be a 5 but the writer's score of "Minus 2" drags it down.
He points his gun at the diner operator, who is standing about a foot away, but instead of the usual-"Open the cash register and put the money in this bag" line, the robber awkwardly reaches around the machine, pushes a button and the drawer opens. He tries to reach around to grab money from one of the bins and the diner man reaches out to grab the man's gun.
Of course it goes off, killing the diner owner. In the brief struggle, the man's mask comes off. The young couple immediately start pleading for their lives, insisting they won't say a thing. The robber asks their names-Carl and Jennifer Stone, then demands the man's wallet.
The robber says he can't take any chances but before he pulls the trigger, a delivery truck pulls up to the diner, with that man going to the side door. So the robber/killer says, "Your luck just changed, Get out of here." He promises that if they say anything to the cops, "I'll come looking for you."
So with the delivery man knocking at the locked back door, both witnesses and robber pull away in the respective vehicles. Our robber goes to talk to a man we later learn is his brother who knows about his brother's "occupation." He slaps him for letting the witnesses go. He tells him to go set up his alibi and he will go after the witnesses.
Dan is now at the scene of the robbery/murder and he and William Boyett, who is Sergeant Williams in this one, observe foot prints and tire tracks in the dirt parking lot-two sets only, apparently the diner does little business-and the boys in the lab do the most amazing thing. They come up with descriptions of the people-three of them, in far more detail than anything I ever saw on Dragnet, or read about in The Hardy Boys. Everything but the color of the woman's dress they learned from shoe prints. While one shoe print being a woman's shoes is understandable, they've got the suspects (thank God we still had that word then, I detest this "person of interest" we hear today) down to a specific weight and height-height to a half an inch. I do believe that measuring the length of one's stride does not precisely determine someone's height because any two people of matching height may take shorter or longer strides, even if in the same health and of the same age.
Back at the hotel, the woman is packing in the room. Her husband makes an anonymous phone call to Mathews-funny how they always get right through to the Dan the man, the policeman who is so much ready for action that he is shown in this one sitting at a desk with his hat on. He gives Dan a precise description of the robber AND reports his license number. So while rushing out of the place in fear of his life, with his newlywed wife, Carl somehow had time to look at and memorize that license plate. From the action we saw earlier, he backed up that car and zipped out of there as fast as he could.
Carl returns to the room and tells Jennifer "the (motel) bill's been paid." Lucky for him when the thief took his wallet and money he had spare money in another pocket, I guess.
The couple start for, home we guess, but stop on the roadside to debate whether they should go to the police. In fear, Jennifer tells him to just go ahead. She expresses worry that if the robber doesn't get them, one of his friends will.
Again I question the script. A lone gunman robs a diner, promises the couple that he will get them-never mentions any "friends" yet this is Jennifer's specific fear. Robbing a diner doesn't get you the kind of dough you'd care to share with any "friends"-especially if you did all the work and they weren't even at the scene. It is totally illogical for her to assume he had any friends who would know anything about him committing robberies.
Of course, the robber's brother, closes up his car repair shop to go hunting for the couple so he can do what his brother should have done-kill them. He goes straight to their motel and for a few bucks gets the clerk to tell him in which direction they drove. Lucky for him the clerk noticed. Mathews did not have the name provided like the bad guy did (they had told his brother where they were staying, which also seemed odd. At the diner, I might have given him my correct name, but would have lied and said I was headed east but the last place we stayed we checked out of.) but he does get to the same motel and the clerk gives him the same information, telling him someone else asked a while ago about that couple.
So the couple, the bad guy brother and Dan are all zipping down the highway, no towns in sight, and they are amazingly close together. From what we saw, the Stones should have had at least a 15-minute head start.
When the bad guy, Pete Norton, sees their car far ahead, instead of coming up and forcing them off the road, he begins firing from some distance away with his revolver. Carl swerves on hearing a bullet but the car is apparently not hit. After a couple of more shots, he pulls over by a ravine, telling Jennifer to run. They both go down to hide in the huge pipe beneath the highway.
Norton pulls up right behind them, goes down the hill and calls for Stone. Carl comes out with his hands up. As Norton asks where his wife is and he says he doesn't know, here comes ol' Jennifer from the culvert calling for Carl. Let's understand this: She was so much in fear for their lives from the robber's "friends" that she insisted they drive away. Now far down the highway they are shot at. Her husband tells her to run but instead of doing so, she heads back toward him while a bad guy is pointing a gun at Carl.
I would have thought she'd be frantically running away from the car, even though there seemed to be nothing in the area but desolate desert. Of course Dan pulls up right after the others and saves the day.
That holdup scene was dreadfully staged. Standing behind a cash register, it is awkward to reach around to grab bills out of the various slots in the tray. All we saw him grab was the 20s, or the slot on the cashier's left. Why not have the diner man take money from all the slots. And this would make it easier to keep him from trying for the gun.
Given what food cost in those days at such a place, there probably was as much or more money in $1 bills than in 20s. As we saw it, there were at least ten bills in that 20's slot. In those days, if you cashed a check for $80 at the bank, unless you asked specifically for certain bills, you would likely be given two 20s, three 10s, and two 5s. Why would a rural diner have ANY twenties in their till at the start of the day, let alone ten or more? A construction crew foreman could have brought in five of his workers, paid for all six meals with a single 20. Later on in the day, the till MIGHT have had a few 20s, quite possibly none. But at the start of the day, the diner man would have only put money in necessary to give change to his customers. The bigger stash would be in a cash box or safe, none of which were mentioned.
I really couldn't get over Carl Stone, knowing the guy behind wants to kill him and Jennifer, after a few missed shots at their car, just pulling over so they could run across the open desert. Why not speed up and try to drive away to some town, maybe a police station? Instead, pull over and trying to run away seems like the quickest way to die. When Pete leads them both beneath the road, he tells them he only has one bullet left. Gee, there's a clever man. He uses all but one bullet to shoot at the car from a distance, leaving him without enough bullets to do the simple job he wants to do.
One last complaint: Two people who saw a man get killed are racing away in fear of their lives. Why then is the title singular-"Frightened Witness"? I'll be generous and give this one a 3. It would be a 5 but the writer's score of "Minus 2" drags it down.
