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

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.

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.

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.

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.