Crime Noir Watch: Vice Raid (1959)

Watched:  05/21/2026

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Edward L. Cahn

I had never seen a Mamie Van Doren movie, and didn't know this was one.  I was getting on the elliptical and literally just threw on a movie and "Vice Raid (1959)" sounded like something I didn't need to focus on super hard.  And up came her name.

And boy howdy, was Mamie Van Doren's mere existence the feature attraction.  The movie essentially is doing the Tex Avery wolf for the first 2/3rds of the movie.  I have never seen a movie that literally puts up a picture of the female star and then gives her measurements.  This is a thing that happened.

The other interesting bit about this movie is that it's a 1950's movie about a prostitution ring that acknowledges what it's about using the word "prostitution".  Pretty crazy for the era.

In our opening scene we find two vice squad cops, Whitey Brandon (Richard Coogan) and Phil Evans grabbing a guy - named Muggsy! - as he steps off a bus with a young woman from Dallas.  Brandon shakes him down for trafficking, when Muggsy agrees to give Brandon and Evans the name of his boss and hand over the girl for a return trip in exchange for a head start out of town.  But as Brandon puts the girl on a bus home, Evans tells Muggsy to run and then shoots him in the back before he can name names.

Evans is dirty!  Who knows how far the corruption goes?!

Mob boss Malone (Brad Dexter - a personal favorite when he's playing heels) decides Brandon is too much of a problem and decides to trap him with his own methods.  He brings in Carol Hudson (Van Doren), a hooker from Detroit, who gets arrested by Brandon and lies, saying he shook her down for money.  Evans, being dirty, backs up her story.

Carol's sister shows up as Carol gives up hooking for being Malone's girl/ supervisor of the other hookers.  It is a mess of a scene.

Brandon, without a badge and undeterred, decides to take down Malone and maybe Carol.

Was this movie good?  It was entertaining, coming in at a tight 72 minutes.  No wasted time here.  It's definitely a true B-picture, and we don't have time or budget for things like "cinematography".  Everything is well-lit and shot from one of three angles.  

Van Doren is not-bad to good!  I liked her.  Coogan was... fine?  He just wasn't exactly Charles McGraw.  Fun fact - he was Captain Video from 1949-1950.

This movie doesn't just talk about prostitution, it also has a scene leading up to sexual assault and uses the word "rape" which shocked the hell out of me for a 1959 movie.  But I think by this point, movies were competing with TV and looking to see what they could do and say at the movies we couldn't show on TV anymore.  

I won't get into the politics of this, but it sure is handled about as clumsily as you'd expect.

And that's kind of the odd thing about the movie.  It wants to be edgy by being direct - and noir up to this point really couldn't be direct and wasn't direct.  We didn't have hookers, we had dime-a-dance girls (read: hookers).  There's definitely SA, but it's kind of off-screen.  And I'm not sure what the answer is here, I'm just pointing out the difference between 1950 and this 1959 movie.

Anyway - not exactly a cinema classic, but I've definitely seen worse.