Not bad--well shot, but rather uninvolving. We'll let Glenn Erickson hold forth on it:

Call it noir if you wish, but the poetically titled Between Midnight And Dawn is really just a straightforward police story, a B&W cops and robbers thriller. The original title Prowl Car better describes the pro-police story in which two ordinary patrol cops on the graveyard shift take on a dangerous underworld figure. Director Gordon Douglas delivers a handsomely assembled thriller, filmed on permanently wet nighttime streets. But the script’s idea of a compelling conflict is to make one cop a softie where criminals and women are concerned, and the other a jaded cynic.

Policemen Dan Purvis (Edmond O’Brien) and Rocky Barnes (Mark Stevens) go after the slimy racketeer Ritchie Garris (Donald Buka) while romancing Kate Mallory (Gale Storm), the dispatcher whose voice they hear on their squad car radio. Kate’s cop father was killed on the job so she avoids romantic attachments with boys in blue. But her matchmaking mother purposely rents an apartment to the eager Romeos. Intuiting that a gang war is beginning, Dan and Rocky are able to arrest Garris and make the charge stick. But one jailbreak later, the gangster takes bloody retribution and threatens more innocent citizens. Only Danny is in a position to stop him.

The exciting story plays as if it were written in 1935. There are no postwar angles of corruption or doubt about the law or the social status quo. The police force is predominantly Irish in makeup. Cops marry cops’ daughters and an independent girl who wants to break the pattern is humored and harassed until she gives in. The sexism becomes complete when the meddling mother refuses to let Kate make her own choices. Dan is secretly angry when Kate chooses the handsome Rocky, but tries to be magnanimous about it.

The attitude toward organized crime is equally dated. Two lowly patrolmen on the night shift spearhead a major anti-organized crime bust without really reporting to anyone. What’s more, they parade their favorite girl in front of the gangsters, never thinking the criminal might strike back at them through her. Interestingly, the woman most threatened is Garris’s own girlfriend Terry Romaine (Gale Robbins). For added shock, to hold the cops at bay the villain threatens an innocent pre-school tot...a depressingly forward-thinking touch.

Some of the squad car chase interiors are filmed inside a real car in motion, adding to the realism. Could director Gordon Douglas have been inspired by the car interior shots in Joseph H. Lewis’s Gun Crazy? One nighttime chase makes good use of access roads behind the Griffith Park Observatory. That makes good production sense as those roads can be closed down late at night. The same curved intersections can be seen years later in the ‘cartoon car’ chase in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Gordon Douglas had just come from the hyper-violent Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, which may account for some of the nastier bits of mayhem on display. His direction is crisp and efficient, but nowhere near the level of realism he’d achieve at Warners with his masterpiece Them! This one seems to be labeled noir mainly because of its evocative title. Between Midnight And Dawn would read well on a marquee with City that Never Sleeps.