The Road to Ruin

Although she was past being a teenager when the original silent version of "The Road to Ruin" (1928) was made, beautiful Helen Foster (as Ann Dixon) is still an innocent young thing. After hanging out with bad girl Nell O'Day (as Eve Monroe), Ms. Foster begins to smoke, drink, and have sex - nothing too unusual, when you consider the characters routinely being played by the likes of Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, and Mae West. But, things are worse for Foster; she hasn't an abortionist worth his salt...

Filmmaker Dorothy Davenport, aka the widow of Wallace Reid, might have considered casting the beloved couple's real life son Wally Jr. in the film. It might have been exploitive, but that, obviously, was too late a consideration. Despite the material, Glen Boles (as Tommy), Bobby Quirk (as Ed), and their gals are a swell bunch to follow… before degradation takes its toll.

**** The Road to Ruin (3/21/34) Dorothy Davenport ~ Helen Foster, Glen Boles, Nell O'Day

I thought this was truly a unique movie considering it was filmed in 1934, when subject matter of this type was definitely a no-no. The film is about an innocent girl, Ann Dixon, who hangs out with her friend, Eve Monroe. They get boyfriends and start drinking and smoking. Ann breaks it off with her boyfriend and hooks up with a low-life older guy. They get busted at a topless/half-naked pool party and Eve comes up positive for a venerial disease of some type. Ann is negative but the film doesn't specifically tell you that she has become pregnant. Her low-life boyfriend takes her to the doctor for an abortion. I can't tell you the rest without ruining the movie so watch it for yourself. You shouldn't be disappointed if you like the off-the-wall types of rarer movies like I do. Enjoy the movie and look for other types such as this one.

Pre-Code exploitation flick about a teenage girl (27 year-old Helen Foster) whose life unravels when she gets involved with the wrong crowd. Booze, drugs, sex, unwanted pregnancy, and abortion are some of the highlights. Provocative for its time no doubt, today it's little more than a curiosity piece worth some giggles. Probably the most titilating scene is a dice game with women stripping to their undies. Maybe of interest to those who want to see what passed for youth culture in the early '30s. Or at least the Hollywood version of it. Remake of an earlier silent that also starred Foster.

This is a mid-1930s exploitation movie designed to "warn" good Christian girls and boys about the dangers of drinking, dancing, and premarital sex. For the 1930s these were indeed scandalous topics which today seem mundane. Ann, our central character, is corrupted by her fun-loving friend Eve. Eve introduces Ann to the evils of romance novels, smoking, dancing with boys and sneaking snorts of Daddy's brandy. Ann and Eve progress to dating men who are old enough to be their fathers. Finally the girls are caught at a drunken pool party where they are arrested and taken to the police station. While there, they are examined by a doctor (presumably for STDs) and given small cards identifying them by name as "sex delinquents"! Things go from bad to worse for poor Ann...

Wow a card identifying the girls as "sex delinquents" merely for attending a drunken pool party! Ann in particular wasn't even drunk and was still fully clothed at the party - no matter, the cops bust her too as a sex delinquent. I wish I had a card identifying ME as a "sex delinquent"... what a conversation piece that would be!

... from First Division Pictures, and written, produced and co-directed (with Melville Shyer) by Mrs. Wallace Reid (Dorothy Davenport). High school student Ann (Helen Foster) falls in with a bad crowd that's into drinking, smoking, and dancing poorly. Her new goofball boyfriend Tommy (Glen Boles) likes booze as much as he likes pawing Ann, so she gets bored and starts seeing shady character Ralph (Paul Page), who leads her into even darker depravity, like skinny-dipping in the backyard pool, strip dice games, and more poor dancing. Also featuring Nell O'Day as Ann's best gal pal (they read naughty books together).

Routine fare for this genre, this was a remake of a 1928 silent of the same name. There's a lengthy nightclub scene in the middle of the film featuring 3 bad singing performances (accompanied by the aforementioned bad dancing) that made me wish that this one was silent, too. Of course, the ultimate culprit for Ann's degeneracy is her parents inattention, since they're too busy heading out to the "Cotton Club". This morality lesson/time capsule is good for some unintentional laughs. It rates higher than what I have given it if you judge it on the so bad it is good scale.