Sittenpolizei

I totally enjoyed this movie! I especially liked that EGR played his character cool, calm and collected. You don't see him yelling at his men and gesticulating all over the place! He portrayed his character as an adept psychologist, an independent thinker, who exhibits grace under fire. He uses compassion and sensitivity in a reassuring way. He sees all of the pieces to a puzzle and knows exactly where to place them in order to make a full picture.

The locations, cars and clothes just blew me away. I grew up in Los Angeles during the early 50's, and I remember riding in a 1949 Ford and 1953 Buick that my father owned.

The way the men looked in their full dress suits and sky highs (slang term for hats); and the women in their quiet elegance (never without gloves); is one of the reasons I love movies from the 40's and 50's.

Even to this day, if I pass through an old part of Los Angeles that is somewhat still intact (which is rare) from that time; it brings back old sweet memories, and I want to stay in that time warp and never come out. If you like EGR, cars, great locations, clothes, coolness and justice....Then you need to see this movie. All I need is for this movie to be released on DVD.

If you're old enough to remember L.A. in the early fifties, this is particularly fun. Lot's of location stuff, downtown, Long Beach or San Pedro. And the bank robbery takes place in Beverly Hills on Camden or Roxbury Drive, just below Little Santa Monica Blvd. Edgar G. Robinson is great as always. It's a cousin to Noir, lots of great faces and character acting. They couldn't afford a lot of sets, or any star beyond E.G.R., which is part of the charm of the movie. And if you like Detroit when it still had character, you'll love the great early fifties cars.

This is not one of Edward G's best films. In fact it may be his worst but it is still watchable. It's pretty much a run of the mill 50's crime story which centers around the activities in one day of a detective's life. Good black and white photography with excellent location shots.....not much use of studio sets. This adds to the realism and if you like old cars, the street scenes are for you! Edward G. is, as usual, top notch and for once gets to be a good guy. An aging Paulette Goddard, whose star was really on the wane, is adequate as the madame of an "escort service"....a thinly disguised brothel....her wordplay with Edward G. is sharp and ever so sexy. The supporting cast is familiar to all......and Lee VanCleef pops up as a killer (what else?) in one of his early films before he became an icon in Italian westerns. This is an enjoyable, throw-away film that is worth catching on some late night weekend. Anything with Edward G. is always one to watch.

Vice Squad takes a documentary style approach to a single day in a police captain's life and what he might encounter.

Of course the murder of a police officer doesn't ever qualify as an ordinary day, but even on those days when an entire force is mobilized looking for a cop killer, still more mundane matters intervene.

Edward G. Robinson was in his B film period which is roughly between All My Sons and The Ten Commandments. Still Robinson always brought a certain class to the films he was doing and Vice Squad is no exception.

Second billed in the cast is Paulette Goddard who is a madam at a bordello. She was on a blacklist of sorts herself at the time, not for politics, but because she had antagonized the powerful Cecil B. DeMille during the shooting of The Unconquered. Her career was winding down, but she would be marrying Erich Maria Remarque and be leaving the screen shortly for Switzerland.

Goddard and Robinson have a nice bond between them. It's obvious he lets her operate because she can be most valuable as a snitch in a pinch. In fact she does come through with some information that starts the case being cracked.

Funny though, ten years earlier Robinson and Goddard as co-stars would have commanded an A list budget, even five years earlier. Hollywood could be very fickle at times.

Still for a B police drama, Vice Squad has an impressive cast list of quality players. Best in the film is Porter Hall, a two timing funeral director who Robinson knows saw something, but won't crack because he was spending a night with his girlfriend instead of being out of town as he told his wife. How they manage to keep him 'in the system' so to speak is really quite ingenious much to the exasperation of his lawyer, Barry Kelley who runs a close second to Hall.

Mixed in with the hunt for a cop killer are more routine matters like exposing a phony Italian count, dealing with Percy Helton's imaginary crimes and a TV interview for publicity's sake. All in the life of a Vice Squad captain.

Fans of Edward G. Robinson and Paulette Goddard will like what they see and Vice Squad is a nice tightly scripted and edited police drama.

EDWARD G. ROBINSON viewed this period in the early '50s as his B-film era, but VICE SQUAD is an efficient, if low-budget product that gives him a chance to show his stuff in a story about the day to day activities of a police precinct in '50s L.A. PAULETTE GODDARD gets top female billing in what is essentially a cameo role as her career was obviously in decline at this point. She's sassy and brittle as the head of an escort club who agrees to cooperate with Robinson's police investigation.

Robinson is seen adroitly handling a number of sticky situations, including the death of a policeman and the reluctance of a witness to talk; the discovery that a bank heist is about to take place; and the effect of the cop killing on a gang of car thieves. It's interesting to catch an early glimpse of LEE VAN CLEEF as one of the car thieves.

There's a film noir look to Joseph Biroc's first rate B&W photography with excellent use of light and shadows and it's directed in brisk style by Arnold Laven. All of the intertwined stories are smoothly coordinated but the tension doesn't start building until about forty-five minutes into the bank heist sequence.

Actually the police tactics shown are pretty underhanded, so it's not exactly a flattering portrait of police procedures--but they do seem credible.

Packs just as much suspense as another crime melodrama with a New York locale--THE NAKED CITY. The shots of L.A. in the early '50s establish atmosphere from the start. Well worth viewing.