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

1st watched 2/17/2007 - 4 out of 10(Dir-Mrs. Wallace Reid & Melville Shyer): Interesting yet slow moving movie displaying many taboo subjects for back then including pre-marital sex, smoking and drinking in high school, nude swimming, an abortion, and older men with younger under-aged women and all being done under the radar of the well-meaning parents in the story. The movie is fairly well done as far as not over sensationalizing the situations and portrays it as a young victim kind of walks into trouble unexpectedly with an obvious innocence. This I'm sure is more how things like this happen instead of how it's usually portrayed. The downward path happens fairly slowly for the main character but it quickly comes to it's end on a very negative note after a badly done abortion. This is the best of these exploitation movies from the 30's that I've seen because it's not thrown in your face but instead builds slowly. Despite this, the slow pace doesn't help the movie be a very powerful story and is it's only real drawback.

This is a sound remake by Mrs Wallace Reid (who appears uncredited near the end in her accustomed role seated at a desk wearing a tie and a concerned expression as the voice of caring, socially responsible authority) of an earlier, apparently much racier, silent film she had made also starring Helen Foster. The 1928 version, according to Variety's reviewer 'Chic' "was crude and hotly sexed", but had now been "denatured and with the action greatly restrained...toned down to the point of mildness. The director apparently worked with one eye on the censors and the other on the box office, with astigmatism resulting."

Considering that the film is called 'The Road to Ruin', the film certainly spends an inordinate amount of its running time on the road - devoting an awful lot of footage, for example, to a wild pre-Code party which ends with the participants joining in a type of strip poker before all ending up in a swimming pool - before at long last arriving rather abruptly at its final tragic destination. There's also the little matter of Miss Foster's age. She still brings a sweet innocence to her role, but in the earlier version she was already 21 years old; and was by now 27, yet still playing a schoolgirl.

As is usual in such films, one wonders why the slimeball who plies Ann with booze and drugs and then pressures her into an abortion didn't just pick on a more robust girl with looser morals in the first place - of whom there seems no shortage in the film - rather than corrupting this delicate young flower. Nell O'Day as Ann's worldly blonde schoolfriend Eve Monroe, for example (resembling a prettier version of the young Bette Davis), despite obviously already having been round the block a few times as a 'sex delinquent' comes out of the film relatively unscathed; thus raising the possibility that if Ann had gone to her for advice about birth control the final tragedy might have been averted. (Eve obviously gets her glamorous, worldly-wise blonde good looks from Mommy, by the way, as played by an unbilled Mae Busch).

This is a cautionary tale aimed at parents. Similar to "Reefer Madness", the film seeks to warn society against the perils of bad parenting. Ann Dixon (Helen Foster) is the main character, a teen who is a model of proper behavior. As her relationship with friend Eve Monroe (Nell O'Day) develops, she is influenced by Eve's behaviors, which are riskier and more permissive.

The plot is almost predictable. A puff on a cigarette leads to an alcoholic drink, which leads to a ride in a fast car, and before you know it...pregnancy! Well, there are some other dots to connect along the way, but it's a fairly linear progression. And who is to blame? The parents.

There are other factors, of course, like bad associations and peer pressure, but the lack of parental supervision and bad parental modeling are the main culprits.

And there are boys and men who pressure the girls into behaviors that push the boundaries of propriety, and there are others who have no regard for the welfare of young women.

The film suffers from simplicity of plot, one-dimensional characters, and a predictable preachiness. It is not meant to be entertaining, per se; there is a definite element of exploitation, since the newly instituted Hayes Code can be circumvented somewhat by claiming to be educational. The risqué scenes would be censored in most other films.

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!