Vice Squad, tapping the affordable Edward G. Robinson and Paulette Goddard for marquee appeal.
Unjustly graylisted by the pamphlet Red Channels. The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television( Issued by the right-wing journal Counterattack on June 22, 1950, the pamphlet-style book names 151 actors, writers, musicians, broadcast journalists, and others until they cleared their names, the customary requirement being that they testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and name names, which the vast majority refused to do. )
Robinson no longer commanded a top salary. Ironically, the movie was a property he had purchased six years earlier, before the HUAC debacle crippled his career. Ms. Goddard had been out of circulation for a while, and traded a reasonable paycheck for what looks like a few day's work. The team came up with a serviceable script about a police captain trying to get a handle on a gang of murderous bank robbers.
All credit to Edward G. Robinson, who makes all these shenanigans look like noble social work!
This isn't a big show for Paulette Goddard, but she does give Mona Ross an appropriately flirtatious quality - and looks cute in furs entering and leaving the captain's office, as if it was a second home.
A reasonably exciting crime tale put together with modest resources, Vice Squad achieves an interesting vibe somewhere between Dragnet and L. A. Confidential. The action is restricted to a couple of sequences, but it's certainly good enough; the bank robbery actually takes place in the Beverly Hills, and locals will easily recognize the streets. 7/10.
Unjustly graylisted by the pamphlet Red Channels. The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television( Issued by the right-wing journal Counterattack on June 22, 1950, the pamphlet-style book names 151 actors, writers, musicians, broadcast journalists, and others until they cleared their names, the customary requirement being that they testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and name names, which the vast majority refused to do. )
Robinson no longer commanded a top salary. Ironically, the movie was a property he had purchased six years earlier, before the HUAC debacle crippled his career. Ms. Goddard had been out of circulation for a while, and traded a reasonable paycheck for what looks like a few day's work. The team came up with a serviceable script about a police captain trying to get a handle on a gang of murderous bank robbers.
All credit to Edward G. Robinson, who makes all these shenanigans look like noble social work!
This isn't a big show for Paulette Goddard, but she does give Mona Ross an appropriately flirtatious quality - and looks cute in furs entering and leaving the captain's office, as if it was a second home.
A reasonably exciting crime tale put together with modest resources, Vice Squad achieves an interesting vibe somewhere between Dragnet and L. A. Confidential. The action is restricted to a couple of sequences, but it's certainly good enough; the bank robbery actually takes place in the Beverly Hills, and locals will easily recognize the streets. 7/10.