Soul of the Slums

William Collier Jr. gets out of prison after doing seven years for a crime he didn't commit. He has vengeance in his heart for Matthew Betz, who framed him into the conviction. He buys a gun and heads to Betz' apartment, only to find him fled. He's met by Blanche Mehaffey -- Metz took her jewelry, told her the rent's paid until the end of the month, and that she can always rustle food --who takes his gun and hides it when the cops show up to frisk him. Then she suggests they go on the square. A couple of days later, Collier winds up at the mission run by kindly Paul Weigel and begins his rehabilitation.

There's dirt, misery, and abject poverty in every frame of this Poverty Row flick. I can't imagine that movie-goers would be interested in escaping to this in the year it came out. Yet TEN NIGHTS IN A BAR-ROOM was a big hit on the States Rights circuit. Of course, it might have helped if Miss Mehaffey could have spoken her lines in more than a dull monotone; there are a lot of seemingly unnecessary cutaways to her speaking individual sentences that I believe she kept blowing her lines and director Frank Strayer had no choice but to chop up what should have been longer shots to accommodate her. The script by Scott Darling has not aged well, with James Bradbury Jr. playing a mute character called "The Dummy". All these problems make this a well-meaning and well-played effort that's hard to sit through.