An LAPD cop digs into the truth behind a body in a barrel and finds himself in the middle of a conspiracy involving a nuclear meltdown in 1959.  Based on a true story.

SYNOPSIS:

It's July 1959 and technicians scramble to prevent a meltdown at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL), an experimental nuclear reactor on a sprawling 1,600-acre facility in the West San Fernando Valley. It is also the testing ground for the precursors to the moon-landing Saturn V rockets.

There’s near panic as the SRE (Sodium Reactor Experiment), is close to melting down and technicians, as a last resort, vent the radioactive gas into the atmosphere. The control room technicians, sweating from the heat and tension, grimly watch as the reactor finally calms down. Junior technician Bob Dale is given the nasty job of cleaning up the radioactive mess — with little or no protective clothing. The radioactive dust and gas rises until it hits the jet stream before heading east.

Meanwhile, at Union Station, Lieutenant Richard Charlton, head of the LAPD Intelligence Division, "greets" some mobsters arriving in LA. Charlton is accompanied by his sidekicks Norm Elden and Manny Balboa.

The mobsters on the train mock the cops, but the LAPD elite division makes short work of the gangsters and tosses the ones still alive into a freight car. Richard notices a kitten hiding in the train's shadows and pockets it for safekeeping. But the heat, the violence, and the cat seem to be working on the cops' consciences as afterward, Richard seems lost in reflection.

The next day Police Chief Pete Pitcher, the head of the LAPD, sends the team to San Pedro Harbor where they find the corpse of a man in a barrel. The body mysteriously has no hands and shows no signs of rigor mortis. The man looks like he's been shot with a speargun. We find out from the teamsters that they take the drums and dump the radioactive waste in 6,000 feet of water off Santa Cruz Island. Suspicion immediately falls on the surly dock workers.

Meanwhile at Lookout Mountain, a top-secret government film lab on Laurel Canyon, “Doc” Dyne, a friend of Richard, has been helping him search for a picture to prove he did take the only photo of Hiroshima from above immediately after the nuclear explosion. Richard notices photos of John Wayne with a Geiger counter. He also spots some of an unknown black man and white woman, one of them in bed together. He resembles the man in the barrel.

Meanwhile, LAPD Chief Pete Pitcher instructs Richard to check on the SSFL lab. He suggests going under cover of the LAPD elite pistol team — Richard is a crack shot. First, the squad pays a visit to the coroner who believes the man is actually black and holds to the theory he was killed with a speargun.

After an impressive sharpshooting display at “The Hill” they meet the head of the SSFL, David Trinity. Richard questions Trinity on the death at San Pedro but gets nowhere. They also meet sinister security head Captain Raul Escobar.

Richard meets Jane Legg at the Formosa Cafe who claims to be the ex-wife of the black man in the barrel. Jane tells Richard that Darryl, the man in the barrel, was murdered by someone at the SSFL. Richard notices she's sporting an unusual and expensive Ladies' Longines Mystery Dial Yellow Gold watch.

As Richard leaves the Formosa he's jumped by two massive thugs. He's saved by the mysterious Sydney Williams, a Kodak investigator. Sydney tells Richard Kodak is investigating the fogging of their films back east. As they flirt she tips him off about RKO Radio Pictures — "The Conqueror" was shot downwind from the atomic bomb test sites and rumors abound that John Wayne and others are sick with radiation poisoning.

Richard meets an old acquaintance, Ed Myles, running security at RKO. Richard presses Myles who reveals the studio is now jokingly referred to not as RKO “Radio” Pictures but “RKO Radioactive Pictures.”

Myles informs them that the actors and crew were exposed to the stuff for weeks. The movie was shot in the canyonlands in Utah near St. George. The military tested 11 atomic bombs at Yucca Flat, Nevada and fallout floated downwind.

The cops then turn up for a shooting team exhibition at “The Hill,” Santa Susana Field Lab, where the team puts on an amazing display of shooting.

The director of the SSFL, David Trinity, appears and invites Richard to his house. Trinity and Richard spar verbally as Trinity explains their work at “The Hill.” Trinity explains how lead is merely stabilized plutonium, thousands of years old.

He notices Richard’s tiny paratrooper pistol and brings out a lead bullet for an example. He gives it to Richard as a souvenir. He posits that he and Richard are not so unalike, both are patriots and strive for perfection. He also knows that Richard flew B-29 reconnaissance missions during the war over Japan. Richard presses Trinity about Darryl Legg but gets nowhere. Richard goes on a tour of the lab.

In the SRE, Sodium Reactor Experiment, control room, Richard spies a piece of clothing jammed into the ceiling. Hox explains it was simply a minor “excursion” or minor nuclear reaction.

Richard won’t be fobbed off however and returns to The Hill again in the following days where he is stonewalled by two tough AEC security officers. They stomp on Richard’s face and his teeth pop out “like large white chiclets.”

The heavies are about to toss Richard over the side when they are interrupted by Sydney once more. Sydney pistol-whips them and humps Richard into her car for a quick getaway.

On the way down The Hill Richard slips in a new set of dentures as Sydney prods Richard into finding out about the fogged film. They barely have time for a few gimlets at Musso and Frank Grill when Sydney suborns him and takes Richard to her place.

“Her place” is the Ambassador Hotel and Sydney gets to ministering to Richard. She quizzes him on his predilection for black women but, fails to get a great answer. She explains her aversion to loud noises came after her brother lost his hearing when a cop “blasted his gun too close to his face,” but won’t elaborate.

Richard starts to feel that Sydney reminds him of someone but he can’t piece it together. When pressed about her brother, she gets testy and tells him to drop it.

He and Sydney spend the night together but Richard falls asleep (we get hints that he has a mild form of narcolepsy). Sydney insists on a goodbye kiss, knowing somehow that Richard is not to be hers and this is the end, sadly, of their brief affair.

Later that night Richard sneaks over the fence to the SSFL and is met by Bob Dale who shows him how to avoid the guards and leads him to the reactor in Area IV and inside the sealed-up lab. As Richard gets a closer look at the rods he begins to piece together the crime scene. In case of power failure, the control rods fall automatically, under gravity, into the pile to stop the reaction — scramming. But it looks like it's been lifted nearly two feet, way beyond what is needed to stop the reaction. Murder? Suicide?

The radiation is already working on Richard and Dale gives him some iodine pills to help block radioactive iodine from being absorbed by the thyroid.

At Lookout Mountain Doc finally gets around to checking through his old mail until he finds one from Kodak. It's the photo from Hiroshima above the explosion taken by Richard and lost until this time. He meets Richard at Coles Bar and gives him the long-sought-after photograph. But Doc is shocked at Richard’s appearance after being exposed to radiation at The Hill.

At the Woodland Hills Motion Picture Association Hospital Richard tracks down Pedro Armendáriz, the famous Mexican actor. Armendariz is sick with a rare kidney cancer. Armendáriz tells Richard he was on the set of The Conqueror downwind from the atomic bomb testing in Nevada. He says Hayward Hough, the head of RKO, had 200 tons of radioactive soil shipped to the studio to match the retakes of shots on the sound stages. He claims “The Duke”, John Wayne, got a lungful too.

Richard travels next down to Newport Beach where he meets “The Duke,” John Wayne himself, on his converted World War II minesweeper, the Wild Goose.

Wayne says he feels fine and that the whole thing is overblown. Pilar, Wayne’s Peruvian wife, serves sandwiches while The Duke plies Richard with strong drinks. Richard gets nowhere and decides to pay a visit to the famous Hayward Hough.

Meanwhile at Richard’s house in Silverlake men dressed as cops, Armitage and Arrowsmith arrive while Vida is alone. She instinctively knows they’re not cops. She tells them she won’t resist but then brains Armstrong with the Geiger Counter and, opening her blouse to distract Arrowsmith, decks him with a baseball bat.

Richard arrives and helps a distraught Vida wrap the bodies in carpets. They find IDs on the men with the address being 7000 Romaine St — Hayward Hough’s world HQ — and also the LA HQ for Kodak Film Labs.

At night they get rid of the bodies by dumping them down abandoned wells at Inglewood Oil Field on La Cienega Boulevard.

At 7000 Romaine St. Richard tracks down billionaire filmmaker Hayward Hough watching a movie in a screening room with Randolph Scott and discovers Hough has a passion for men as well as women. He quizzes Hough’s whereabouts on August 15th. Hough admits to being with Scott at the infamous Richfield gas station on 5777 Hollywood Boulevard, a famous assignation point for gay men.

But the AEC and other Federal agents are putting the screws on and Norm gets pulled over for ‘speeding’ by a black highway patrol officer. He then gets beaten up by two white CHP cops. Manny’s home in Boyle Heights is also raided by some thugs dressed as “LAPD.”

Richard learns that his old friend Doc has been involved in an “accident” and races to the hospital. Doc tells him he was set upon in the dark as he was leaving Lookout Mountain by some goons from the AEC. They stole most of his files and photos of Yucca Flat. He gives Richard an envelope with a 7000 Romaine address and some additional photos of Darryl with a mysterious black woman. Richard can’t quite make her out. Doc dies in Richard’s arms.

At home in Silverlake, Vida notices lipstick on Richard’s shirt collar. She loses control, tears the shirt collar off, and tosses the shirt back in the wash. Richard comes home later but Vida has walked out on him, tired of his philandering. He grabs the Geiger counter and a bottle of Southern Comfort and walks out. He then notices an inscription: "To D from D," with a small heart. Trinity’s first name is David and Daryl starts with a…

Richard’s working out the angles and swigging the Southern Comfort as he flops into his car but it's already occupied by two Atomic Energy Commission detectives, Smith and Jones, there to give him a message from Dr. Trinity.

The message is: “Stay away from The Hill.” The duo starts on Richard with Billy clubs. As Richard is keeled over Smith is about to deliver the coup de grace when Richard smashes the Southern Comfort bottle into the black brogues of Smith. The two thugs take off down the road, running in the dark. They disappear into the darkness, almost invisible now in the dim 1950s streetlights.

Richard lets off two shots as Jones' head suddenly tilts forward, as a slug exits his left eye.

He crashes straight into the rear window of a Studebaker. A split second later Smith stops, turns, and we realize he too has been snipered in the right eye and cashiers himself onto the pavement. Richard takes a swig from the Southern Comfort bottle — “That’s for Doc,” he hisses.

That night Chief Pitcher grills Richard on the missing AEC operatives. Richard plays dumb. Pitcher complains to Richard that he’s getting grief from the feds over Richard harassing Trinity at the SSFL and the AEC complaining about their operatives being beaten up.

Back at the LAPD detectives’ office Doris, the office secretary, informs him that some “gal” from Kodak rang to say she’s going back east. Sydney also left him a box of photos, one which shows Darryl in a tryst with Hayward Hough.

The next night at El Coyote restaurant, Richard and Norm drunkenly plan to storm the SSFL at night. But as they arrive at the SSFL they are immediately apprehended by Raul who takes them to Trinity’s hilltop aerie after confiscating their weapons including Richard’s tiny paratrooper’s pistol.

Trinity reveals that the AEC told Kodak about the danger of radiation getting into the milk supplies but they turned a blind eye. Richard presses Trinity about the SRE “Excursion” but he brushes it off as a “one-off” incident.

Norm and Richard confront Trinity that Hayward Hough and Trinity were both sleeping with Darryl Legg, who is actually Sydney's twin brother. Trinity wanted to scare Darryl off from reporting "The Conqueror" scandal and stop seeing Hough so had Darryl set up but the plan went awry and Darryl died in an accident when control rods skewered him to the ceiling (just like a speargun). Trinity looks at his wrist-watch and realizes — his daughter, Jane Legg had the matching wristwatch in the father-daughter set and Richard’s good detective work figured that out. As Richard is piecing together the murder Sydney slips out of the shadows and sidles up to Trinity. It looks like she's been playing it both ways. Richard now realizes Raul frowned on the director's ‘flamboyant' lifestyle and decided to get rid of Trinity and reveals it to the group. What Raul didn't count on were the gases given off by the corpse which lifted the airtight barrel to the surface.

Then there's a silenced pistol shot from Sydney’s direction. THUB!

Smoke pours out of Sydney's handbag. Everyone looks for the champagne cork but it's a silenced ACP Baby Browning pistol. Sydney has shot Trinity with a whisper-quiet silencer.

Sydney realizes Trinity is responsible for Darryl’s death, accident or no accident. Raul doesn’t react as he seems satisfied to get rid of Trinity. Sydney wanders up to Richard and seemingly playfully sticks her hands once more into his pants pocket for a ‘last goodbye.’

Raul forces Richard and Norm into the SRE reactor room and ties them up. But Sydney has secretly slipped Richard his tiny paratrooper’s pistol and he manages to squeeze in the .45 caliber long bullet. As Raul stands by the reactor switches ready to finish them off, Richard, using his sharpshooter skills, makes another near-impossible shot through Norm's open mouth and kills Raul, who falls on the off-switch stopping the reaction.

Norm and Richard, still locked in a radioactive building, scream for help, banging on the doors until, miraculously, it gently slips open. They enter the early dawn light and see a Kodak camera on the ground. Sydney has saved them again.

Vida returns home and forgives Richard, who promises to stop philandering, and we end the movie in The VA Cemetery as a heavy lead coffin is lowered into the ground and covered in concrete. It's a military send-off for Darryl as Sydney watches from a distance holding a pair of Darryl's small white gloves. She waves a sad goodbye to Richard. Vida holds Richard's arm tightly and tips her hat to acknowledge Sydney.

BOX CANYON