"Vice Squad" is a nice little docudrama about a day in the life of Vice Squad Captain Barney Barnaby (Edward G. Robinson).The film opens with Al Barkis (Edward Binns) and Pete Monk (Lee Van Cleef) hot wiring a car for an unknown purpose. A beat cop comes upon them and tries to stop them but is shot. Unbeknownst to the killers, a meek little man Jack Hartrampf (Porter Hall) witnesses the crime. As the squad cars arrive Hartrampf is arrested and is taken to HQ.Capt. Barnaby arrives the next morning and begins his investigation by grilling the beleaguered Hartramph. Barnaby learns that Hartramph had been "carrying on" with an unknown lady behind the scenes. His lawyer, Dwight Foreman (Barry Kelley) assures him that he will get off for lack of evidence and that Hartrampf's wife needn't know of his discretion.Barnaby suspects that Hartrampf knows more than he is telling. Aware that the man is innocent of the crime, he nevertheless conspires to keep him in custody until he can unravel the mystery surrounding the shooting. A snitch, Frankie Pierce (Jay Adler) tells Barnaby that he has heard of an impending bank robbery about to take place.We are next shown the gang's preparations for the heist. The Barkis gang, which also includes a reluctant Marty Kosalitch (Adam Williams) finalize their plans. Meanwhile, Barnaby continues with his investigation and learns that Vicki Webb (John Vohs) is the lady with whom Hartrampf has been keeping company.The bank robbery is foiled by the police but Kosalich backs out just before the robbery attempt. In their escape the gang takes sweet young Carol Lawson (Mary Ellen Kay) hostage.Barnaby enlists the aid of Mona Ross (Paulette Goddard) an "escort service" Madam to help him track down the whereabouts of the gang. Barnaby tricks Hartrampf into identifying Kosalitch as the killer, forcing him to reveal the hiding place of the gang. Fearing for the safety of the hostage, Barnaby closes in on the gang and.........................Robinson as always, is better than his material. Although this was not an "A" feature, Robinson's performance along with those of Porter Hall, Barry Kelley, Edward Binns et al raise the quality of the film. Paulette Goddard, once a stunning beauty was now showing her age and would soon retire from films. Her role here is minimal.An excellent little film.

Arnold Laven's VICE SQUAD is a 1953 "police procedural" B that follows LA police chief Edward G. Robinson around for a day and he sees it all: a patrolman shot, a marriage bunco, pickpockets, an "escort service", a bank heist, police snitches, and other flotsam and jetsam with some harmless insanity and adultery thrown in for good measure. It's all in a day's work for the chief, a no-nonsense man with a kind side (reminiscent of Robinson's "Asa Keyes" only less verbose) who gives everything from misdemeanors to murder raps the attention they merit and even manages to squeeze in an appearance on a TV talk show (cut short, of course, when he finds out the cop died). He's got time for everyone and always gets his man but the methods the police use would cause rioting in the streets today. Oh well, the ends justify the means and it's all for a good cause at the end of this day. Actors like Eddie G., Barbara Stanwyck, and a host of others always did their professional best in these kinds of '50s B's which makes them a pleasure to watch even if the movies themselves aren't so hot. This one's not bad with the LA locations and unsung character actors (milquetoast Porter Hall, sinister Lee Van Cleef, sweaty Adam Williams, and an uncredited Percy Helton) all helping to raise it a notch above the routine. The billed-above-the-title co-star Paulette Goddard didn't hurt, either, and makes the most of her brief scenes. She's a sassy "escort operator" in sunglasses and mink that was probably based on "Hollywood Madam" Brenda Allen, in the news at the time for testifying before a Senate subcommittee hearing on police corruption in LA. Those hearings became the basis for William McGiver's THE BIG HEAT, which was made the same year and, in fact, VICE SQUAD seems like a "good cop/bad cop" counterpoint to Fritz Lang's brutal noir.

An unsuspecting man, Jack Hartrampf, the owner of a funeral parlor, is seen coming out of a tryst with a young woman. Little prepares him for watching from the shadows as two criminals kill a policeman who discovered the pair were up to no good. Jack is of two minds, on the one hand it is his civil duty to report what he saw, on the other, he is a married man who cannot be involved in a scandal. He is taken as a witness, anyhow.At the police station the day is starting for Capt. Barnaby, a hard working man facing another tough day at the center of all sorts of police matters needing his attention. The death of one of his men hurts Barmaby as well as enrages him. He knows Jack Hartrampf saw exactly what happened, but he cannot make the man go out of his way to help. With the help of his highly paid lawyer, Hartrampf is released, but Barnaby has a way to get him back as a material witness.Capt. Barnaby hears from a man being held at the station about a possible robbery at a bank. The criminal has heard on the street this piece of information, which he uses to get out of detention. Barnaby's life is further complicated when Mona Ross, the owner of a "escort service" knows one of the potential bank robbers, one Al Barkis. He uses his leverage in keeping two of her girls to get the woman to cooperate."Vice Squad" the MGM release was one of the better B type films of the era, something that was the case of releases that were produces as fillers as double features. Arnold Laven directed this crime drama set in the Los Angeles of the time. The screenplay is by Lawrence Roman, an adaptation of the novel "Harness Bull" written by Leslie White.At the time the great Edward G. Robinson was perhaps not the bright star of his early career, but he kept making movies which he made better by his intelligent approach that was his hallmark. He was also a marked man in the era of the Hollywood 'witch hunt'. Mr. Robinson is a pleasure to watch in "Vice Squad". Here he plays a good man, a far cry for this start in the cinema. He carries the film on the strength of his performance. There are things that will appear as politically incorrect in the way Barnaby torments the poor milquetoast of Hartrampf, something that was not an issue at the time when the film was made. His methods might not have gone according to the book, but he got the results expected of his rank.Paulette Goddard has the second billing as Mona Ross. Her role is a small one, but she is a welcome presence in the story. The supporting players enhance the picture, especially Porter Hall as Hartrampf. Edward Binns and Lee Van Cleef are the criminals at the heart of the plot; both men give good performances.Joseph Biroc, a veteran cinematographer gives us a glimpse of different parts of Los Angeles as it looked in those years. The musical score is credited to Herschel Burke Gilbert. "Vice Squad" is one of the best films of the genre thanks to Arnold Laven inspired direction.

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.