Fri 5 Aug 2022
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: VICE SQUAD (1953).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[6] Comments
VICE SQUAD. United Artists, 1953. Edward G. Robinson, Paulette Goddard, Porter Hall, Adam Williams, Jay Adler, Joan Vohs, and Lee Van Cleef. Screenplay by Lawrence Roman, from the novel Harness Bull, by Leslie T. White. Directed by Arnold Laven.
A B-movie with a bit of faded star power. Not always exciting, but when it works, it works well.
Edward G Robinson runs the Detective Bureau of an unnamed agency that looks a lot like LAPD and since the film starts with a cop-killing, he pretty much has his work cut out for him. He takes time to expose a fortune hunter posing as an Italian Count, and listen to an underworld informant (Jay Adler, in a nicely-done bit part) with a tip on a forthcoming bank job, but his primary focus is on the murdered officer — until the killing is tied in with the hold-up.
Screen-writer Lawrence Roman (whose credits include A Kiss Before Dying) does a fine job of switching focus between the cops and the hoodlums, delineating the characters, bringing out internal conflicts in both camps, and generally pointing up the similarities in their methodical approach — Robinson often seems to have as little regard for the niceties of the law as the bad guys — while the hoods prepare for their caper and the cops prepare to close in on them.
Arnold Laven was a workhorse director who showed flashes of talent, given a decent script. Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1957) and Rough Night in Jericho (1967) offer lively action scenes and moments of real feeling surprising in rough-and-ready movies. Vice Squad doesn’t achieve much emotional intensity, but it builds a certain amount of suspense as it moves along, and really comes alive in a final chase-and-shootout in a rotting warehouse.
By the way, second-billed Paulette Goddard gets about five minutes of screen time, shot on two sets with the look of being rushed through in a single day — talk about faded star power! But what really bothers me is that this movie is all about unraveling a murder and bank robbery.
So why did they call it Vice Squad?
August 5th, 2022 at 10:26 pm
Nice hard hitting cop drama. Leslie T. White was a pulp staple and went on to some success as a historical novelist.
August 5th, 2022 at 11:51 pm
From an online review of White’s autobiography, ME, DETECTIVE (1936):
“Leslie Turner White, who served as inspiration for Chandler’s Marlowe, and whose autobiography, Me, Detective (1936), played a pivotal if largely forgotten role in the formation of American noir.
“Like most of Los Angeles’s heroes, fictional or otherwise, White was an immigrant, born in rural Ontario, Canada, in 1903. The son of a Methodist preacher, he served stints as a carny and prizefighter before finding work as a ranger in Ventura County, California. White describes the experience in the opening line of Me, Detective: ‘The peculiar qualification that won for me, at the age of twenty, my first law enforcement position, was the simple fact that I owned a horse. Nobody thought to ask if I could ride the horse; if he had, I would not have landed the post.’
“The patter is lighter than Chandler’s, but essentially this could serve as a thematic synecdoche of the subgenre. There is the same reserve and surface self-effacement — the noir hero downplays his abilities and sullies his motivations — but beneath that is a clear commitment to a moral code. White leaves his crucial point unwritten, allowing the reader to infer that had he been asked if he could ride a horse, he’d have answered honestly, irrespective of the cost.”
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-forgotten-noir-detective/
August 7th, 2022 at 5:48 pm
Arnold Laven also did a lot of good TV work, both as a director and producer.
August 9th, 2022 at 9:20 am
What are the other movies about vice squads? I suspect there are several (Sharky’s Machine for example)
August 9th, 2022 at 9:32 am
There is VICE SQUAD from 1982 with Gary Swanson and Season Hubley, and THE VICE SQUAD, from 1931 with Paul Lukas and Kay Francis. (These are the easy ones.)
August 10th, 2022 at 10:39 am
Thanks!