The Road to Ruin

Helen Foster is a nice young woman, and her mother trusts her when she wants to go to unsupervised parties. Alas! It's a hop, a skip and a jump from necking in a canoe to an affair with Grant Withers. When she's caught in a police raid on a strip poker game, her mother is outraged.... at the police. She determines to supervise her daughter better, but the girl discovers she's in trouble and goes to Withers, who refuses to marry her. He suggests a doctor. In return for that, she agrees to go to a party his boss is throwing, with tragic results.

I saw the Alpha Video version of the old Thunderbird print: 41 minutes instead of the listed 60, and what's left is a doleful litany of what the title promises; Miss Foster is reputed to have gone through a bottle of whiskey a day during the filming of the strip poker scene. What remains is clearly antecedent to both pre code movies, with its litany of lascivious behavior, but also the cheap exploitation films of the middle of the 1930s. It's an inartistic, unadorned story of what happens to bad girls, and any commercial success it had was due to its harshly moralistic story.... and the strip poker scene.

The Road to Ruin (1928)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Sally (Helen Foster) is a sweet and innocent girl who hasn't even kissed anyone. She starts hanging out with Eve who tells her that there's nothing wrong with a little kiss. In order to get Sally prepared, Even offers up some booze and before long the innocent Sally is drinking, smoking, kissing, partying and eventually this leads to sex. Before Sally knows it she's pregnant and the guy wants her to have an abortion.

THE ROAD TO RUIN was remade in 1934 and that sound version is certainly better know and more widely available but thankfully this original has turned up and is now making the rounds. I was surprised to see how entertaining this movie was as it was certainly rather generic but at the same time it was actually well-made and featured a pretty good lead performance. Of course, the 41-minute running time helped keep things moving.

It's also worth noting that the director, Dorothy Davenport, was a female so it's interesting to have this being directed by a woman. The film's story is pretty basic and there's certainly no character development as Sally pretty much goes from one scene to the next trying something different and becoming more of a "sinful" person. I thought what made the film work was that Foster was so believable in the part and for the most part I thought she turned in a good performance.

This film's subject matter is a bit darker than a couple of the other silent exploitation films that I've seen. The abortion matter is right in your face and there's no question that the film goes after parents for not educating their kids like they should. There's certainly nothing great here but if you're interesting in these type of exploitation movies then it's certainly worth watching.

A cautionary tale about the dangers of smoking, drinking, fornicating, gambling and skinny-dipping (all the fun things in life, basically) is notable for the way it coyly tiptoes around the issues it seeks to condemn. It's a pretty good movie though, even if almost everything young Helen Foster goes through would make up the average teenagers Friday night out these days.