The California Kid is a 1974 American made-for-television action thriller film directed by Richard T. Heffron and starring Martin Sheen. Plot In 1958, two Navy sailors on leave (one portrayed by Sheen's younger brother, Joe Estevez) are speeding in a 1951 Ford Custom to get back to base on time. When driving through Clarksberg, a town infamous for speed traps, they are pursued at high speed by Sheriff Roy Childress (Vic Morrow), who pushes their car over the edge of a sharp mountain curve with his 1957 Plymouth Belvedere, killing them. Soon after, a stranger—Michael McCord (Martin Sheen)—arrives in town driving a hot rodded black 1934 Ford three-window coupe, known as "The California Kid". McCord is pulled over by the sheriff for speeding and establishes himself with the sheriff as a hot rodder and potential speed maniac, boasting that his car can do in 10 seconds. McCord pleads guilty in front of Judge J.A. Hooker (Frederic Downs) and pays the ticket. McCord later gets coffee at a local diner where the sheriff and judge are also eating. As the sheriff and waitress Maggie (Michelle Phillips) look on, McCord clips a newspaper article, places it on the counter, and leaves the diner. The sheriff sees that the article was about the crash (its headline revealing that the sailors were the sixth and seventh victims of the mountainous curves that year), returns to the station, reviews the accident report, and realizes that McCord shares a last name with one of the sailors. McCord finds the sailors' wrecked car at the impound yard and sees that its rear bumper was dented by pushbars, seemingly reinforcing his growing suspicion that the crash was not an accident. He also repeatedly drives through the curves at the scene of the crash to test his car's limits, tuning it to better handle the terrain, and learns from Maggie that the sheriff has not been the same since his wife and son were killed by a hit and run driver five years earlier. 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 after the sheriff pursues their 1955 Mercury for speeding and runs it off the same curve as the sailors. Buzz wants to kill the sheriff in revenge, but McCord convinces him to hold off, revealing that one of the