The Vice Squad

Ah the vice squad. The very name is arrogant and preachy, maybe that's why we don't have them anymore. The name suggests that we are in need of a law enforcement agency to keep us from our vices. In the show "Miami Vice" our vice was drugs. In "Vice Squad" the vice was women. It seems the vice squad itself had a vice, and that was arresting as many women as possible by any means.

The main character, Stephen Lucarno (Paul Lukas), was a foreign diplomat who was seeing an ambassador's wife (Juliette Compton). He was in the car with her in the process of breaking the relationship off when a vice squad officer rolled up on them. They were only talking, but apparently, being in a parked vehicle with the lights off meant something dirty was going on. The cop accused them of "necking." Even though the officer wasn't going to arrest them (because he had no proof), he was going to take down the license plate for his records.

The ambassador's wife was not about to allow her name or vehicle to be put in the records. It would've been a disastrous scandal for her if it were discovered she was on the side of the road with another man. So she ran the cop over and kept going. Stephen, by that time, was outside of the car and could only watch in horror as she mowed down the flatfoot. Stephen was now an accessory to murder unless he accepted the terms laid forth by Sergeant Mather (Rockliffe Fellowes): be a stool pigeon or go to jail. Stephen opted for the former.

A stool pigeon is like a confidential informant, but worse. A stool pigeon is more like an agent provocateur. He gets paid by the law enforcement agency to be a part of, or even instigate the crime for the agency to then make an arrest. In this case, Stephen was meeting with ladies who were too smart to meet with a cop in order to catch them taking payment for sex. It was a shameful job for Stephen, but he was desperate not to go to prison.

After two years of stool pigeoning Stephen had had enough and preferred death to what he was doing. As he went to step in front of a moving train a nice woman named Madeleine Hunt (Judith Wood) saved him. She then took him to his home, dried him out, and took care of him for a couple of days. For her efforts she was made a vagrancy (prostitution) target by Sgt. Mather. And worse still, Stephen unknowingly was the stool pigeon used to arrest her. No, she didn't accept money from him for sex. A crooked Sgt. Mather arrested her even when Stephen said she was not a prostitute.

The point of this movie was to show how vice squads were corrupt and/or abusive. They used their positions as police to entrap women and secure convictions when it came down to the woman's word against the cop's word. Even today we know which way that's going to go.

I didn't know it was acceptable to out the police department on film in 1931 so I was glad to see this. Somehow, I didn't think police suddenly became corrupt during the time of Serpico, and even if these cops weren't on the take, they were being unethical and using dirty tricks just to harass and arrest women. Bravo you bullies.

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Now THIS pre-Code movie is a clear and courageous accusation of the wrongs in American society in the early 30s if ever there was one: a DIRECT attack on the 'famous' Vice Squad and its methods for bringing as many 'party girls' (a euphemism for prostitutes) to 'justice' in order to protect American morals. It doesn't hesitate to depict their way of 'working' in detail: they pick men in need, or in trouble with the law, as stool pigeons to trap the unsuspecting girls and catch them 'in flagranti' - in this case, the forced stool pigeon is a former member of a foreign embassy, who got innocently involved in a murder case; and for two years, he's being used by the ruthless police captain to ruin the lives of countless girls, until he literally can't look at himself in the mirror anymore, becomes an alcoholic, and attempts suicide. He's saved by a nice, innocent young girl - but very soon, she becomes a target of the 'Vice Squad' as well; and only he can save her reputation, by telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...

With the help of an excellent cast and a first-class script and direction, "Vice Squad" became one of the VERY few movies (and of course, it would under NO circumstances have been granted a seal three years later) that OPENLY, and in NO way humorously, accuses the police methods as well as the overall social odds during the first years of the Great Depression; it will forever remain a time document for everyone to see - just in case history books might be altered over the years and the social evils of the era should be 'whitewashed'...

...ha cha cha cha. So sang Kid Creole and the Coconuts and this must have inspired the writers to embark on a 'stoolie' story. The outcome is an attack on the corrupt police in the Vice Squad. After the dramatic killing of a policeman by Ambassador's wife, Juliette Compton at the film's beginning, Paul Lukas (Stephen) is left to take the blame and so is blackmailed into becoming a police informer. His role becomes one to set up girls to be prosecuted on vagrancy charges, ie, prostitution. However, once kindly Judith Wood (Madeline) is targeted, he has second thoughts about his new profession.

The film is ok, made more interesting by the fact that this is pretty well what actually went on. It has a good social history value. The film also depicts idiot policemen getting their come-uppance. This happens at the beginning of the film when the rozza books Lukas and Compton for 'necking', even though they weren't, after shouting out "Vice Squad" at them. Who does he think he is? Well, Compton sorts him out nicely. Even if it is a bit of a shock.

The film loses its way a bit with Lukas in the lead as he gets s bit mopey and you sometimes can't understand him because of his thick accent. I'd watch it again, though.

Intelligent drama benefits from literate script and a sensitive central performance by Paul Lukas, well cast as a diplomat blackmailed by corrupt vice cops into entrapping prostitutes. Lukas nicely balances a shabby gentility with despair as he's driven to drink in lowdown Greenwich Village dives to forget his "dirty" job. Choosing between sleek Kay Francis and blonde Judith Wood presents a romantic dilemma paralleling the moral decision he must make. Esther Howard--a longtime character actress and Preston Sturges favorite--here looks unrecognizably youthful as a salty-tongued artist's model.

"The Vice Squad" is a most unusual movie...one that Hollywood probably could not have gotten away with making just a few years later with the new toughened Production Code. This is because the villain in this film is a cop--a dirty, manipulative one...something you were simply not supposed to have in films after the industry was morally sanitized in mid-1934.

When the story begins, Stephen Lucarno (Paul Lukas) is on a lonely country road at night talking to a woman. They aren't doing anything illegal...just talking. Soon, a cop approaches them and begins threatening them...and the woman runs over this policeman and kills him!! Stephen is left at the scene and a vice cop arrives and announces that Stephen will be his informer and help him on prostitution cases OR he'll be sent to prison for murder...a murder he did not commit. Well, Stephen is naive and soon becomes the cop's number one stoolie. Now this is odd, as Stephen works at the embassy. They don't say he's the ambassador but he most likely DID have diplomatic immunity and should have stood firm against the threat...but he didn't. What's next? See the picture.

Normally I wonder why Lukas was in so many American films in leading roles. After all, his Hungarian accent is thick...kinda Dracula-like. But here, the accent and fine manners work well with the character. He is fine in this role. As for the movie, it's also pretty good...despite the plot being a bit difficult to believe. Worth seeing.