User Reviews

M-SQUAD – Street of Fear - 1957

This is the sixth episode of the 1957 to 1960 Crime series, M-SQUAD. The series ran for 117 episodes and features Lee Marvin as the headliner. Marvin is a Lt with the elite M-Squad unit of the Chicago Police.

The Detectives of M-Squad are trying to bust a crook, Lawrence Dobkin, who is moving stolen gems cross country. Dobkin uses a front of being a costume jewelry manufacturer. Every time the Police check out his business, he comes up clean.

The squad hatches a plan for Marvin to go undercover. They stage a fake robbery of one of Dobkin's employees, Barbara Turner. Marvin foils the fake purse snatching and is Turner's hero. She agrees to go out on a date with the "out of town salesman" Marvin.

Once in with Turner, Marvin soon charms his way into meeting Dobkin. Dobkin of course being the suspicious type, soon tumbles to Marvin being a cop. Needless to say, Dobkin is not amused and comes a gunning for Marvin. The finale features a nicely done rooftop fist fight.

Barbara Turner was the ex of Vic Morrow, and is the mother of Jennifer Jason Leigh. Dobkin would move to directing television where he racked up several hundred credits as a director.

This is a pretty good episode of a great Police series. (b/w)

***SPOILERS***Tough and no BS Chicago cop Let. Frank Ballinger, Lee Marvin, goes undercover as out of state furniture salesman Bob Steel in order to uncover a nation wide jewel fencing operation headed by Louie Prince, Lawrence Dobkins. Prince is using unsuspecting women to fence stolen jewelry making it look like their really costume jewelry. It's young country girl Alice Snyder, Barbara Turner, whom Lt. Ballinger is keying in on in breaking the case by first saving her life in a parking lot that was staged to get Let. Ballinger win her confidence and possibly, in Ballinger mind, heart as well. In fact Ballinger who's in no way handsome looking, he looks like he just survived a 15 round boxing match with Mike Tyson,seemed to have lost his bearings in falling in love with Alice and forgot what his job assignment, getting the goods on Louie Prince, rally was.

It's after when Prince got wind with the help of his gun moll or personal squeeze Christine Demonson, Palama Duncan, that Steel was really Chicago cop Frank Ballinger he then planned to whack him before he could put the cuffs on him. This lead to Ballinger to take the chance in confessing to Alice that he's really a cop not furniture salesman to get her off the hook, in her going along with him, in any crimes that she committed for Prince without her knowing about them in advance.

***SPOILERS*** Drage out slug fest between Ballinger, who's at least a head taller, with the pint-size Louis Prince as he was just about to ice him. That soon lead to Prince being knocked out coled and thrown from a two floor embankment with his skull fractured. As we saw Let. Ballinger took a chance in telling Alice the truth about who he was, a cop, and what he was out to do, get Prince, paid off. Not just for Ballinger but Alice as well in her stopping to work for Prince that in the end , if she continued, would have landed her behind bars for a stretch of 5 to 10 years in the state penitentiary.