Mamie Van Doren in "Guns Girls and Gangsters" (1959)
A sensational blonde bombshell Las Vegas nightclub singer Vi Victor (Mamie Van Doren) is unhappily married to her trigger-happy volatile husband, Mike Bennett (Lee Van Cleef). Mike is a very jealous and dangerous man who will not grant Vi a divorce.
Vi is visited in her dressing room by her husband's former cellmate at San Quentin, cocky tough guy bank robber Chuck Wheeler (Gerald Mohr). Wheeler has plans for an elaborate heist of an armored truck carrying money from a Las Vegas casino.
Vi’s nightclub is owned by the racketeer Joe Darren (Grant Richards), her current boyfriend, who is enlistsed by Chuck to launder the $2 million casino money estimated in the take of the armored car robbery Chuck planned in jail with Mike. Another ex-con from San Quentin, petty criminal Lou Largo (Paul Fix) is hired to rig a short-wave radio on the armored car that regularly must check-in with headquarters and can pick-up police signals.
Chuck easily rounds up his gang, but his carefully worked-out plan gets upset when a raging Mike escapes from jail after Vi tells him she wants a divorce and he hears she’s messing around with Joe. Though promised by Chuck a cut in the robbery for just staying in prison and serving out the three more months of his sentence, the crazed Mike escapes from prison just before the armored truck robbery is to occur and causes havoc when he returns to his his unfaithful wife to discover it’s not Joe, but Chuck his unfaithful wife is planning to run away with after the robbery, and the cellmates become bitter rivals while Joe is eliminated by Mike.
But before they can settle matters the rivals for Vi must work together on the precision-planned robbery that involves shooting out the tire of the armored car and forcing the guards to have the flat fixed in the garage owned by the nearby Stage Coach Inn owners (Elaine Edwards & John Baer). While the repair work takes place, Chuck and Mike kill the three guards and take the armored car to Los Angeles where they plan to launder the money through Joe’s connection with the shady warehouse owner Mr. Wong (W. Beal Wong). But the perfect plan turns violently sour and the principle hoods get gunned down in a shoot-out at the garage with the police, with Vi arrested as an accomplice.
A 1959 American black-and-white low budget B-movie noir crime thriller film directed by Edward L. Cahn, produced by Robert E. Kent, screenplay by Kent, story by Paul Gangelin and Jerry Sackheim, cinematography by Kenneth Peach, starring Mamie Van Doren, Gerald Mohr, Lee Van Cleef, Grant Richards, Elaine Edwards, John Baer, and Paul Fix. Band leader Ray Anthony was married to Van Doren at the time.
Gerald Mohr was an outstanding actor. His charisma is undeniable, and he cuts a commanding figure on the silver screen. In the days of radio, he was the voice of Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s iconic private eye, and no greater voice existed for the part.
Mamie Van Doren is one of several actresses who sprang up in the 1950s in the wake of Marilyn Monroe’s massive popularity. Mamie spent most of her career in exploitation movies. She is prominent in teen delinquency dramas like “High School Confidential” (1958) and “Untamed Youth" (1957). She is well represented in such exploitation movies as “Sex Kittens Go To College" (1960), “3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt" (1964), and “The Private Lives of Adam and Eve" (1960.
Mamie Van Doren was a striking, attractive skillful actress, and had the talent to add layers to one-dimensional characters.
The narrator almost always refers to Mamie Van Doren's character by her full name, "Vi Victor," and never just "Vi" as some of the other characters, a reference to the old Latin saying, "Vae victis" ("woe to the conquered").
Vi Victor drives an Edsel Citation Convertible, a pretty rare car (only 930 ever made). Edsel was in fact a subdivision of Ford meant to produce "the car of the future". But Edsel was, apparently, too much ahead of its time. The models flopped and the brand was discontinued after only two years.
Soundtrack music:
Anything Your Heart Desires
Music by Buddy Bregman
Lyrics by Stanley Styne
Performed by Mamie Van Doren (uncredited)
[Vi performs the song as part of her nightclub act]
Meet Me Half Way, Baby
Music by Buddy Bregman
Lyrics by Stanley Styne
Performed by Mamie Van Doren (uncredited)
[Vi performs the song at the New Years Eve party]
A classic B-movie by prolific low-budget director Edward L. Cahn “The She Creature” (1956), ”Voodoo Woman” (1957), ”It! The Terror from Beyond Space" (1958), the film that inspired Ridley Scott's "Alien" (1979). Cahn is best known for directing "Our Gang" comedies from 1939 to 1943, and a long line of other short subjects and B-movies afterward. Cahn was born in Brooklyn, New York, and went to work at Universal Pictures in 1917 while still a student at UCLA. He also made a number of films for American International Pictures.
A true relic of the 1950s, for Mamie Van Doren completists.