Confessions of a Vice Baron

Confessions of a Vice Baron (1943)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining exploitation picture has a prisoner (Willy Castello) about to be put to death but before that he walks into the wardens office and asks to talk. It seems the prisoner wants to talk about his life in crime so that hopefully others will hear the stories and decide to take a different path in life.

The exploitation roadshow had its biggest period during the mid to late 30's once the Hayes Office started to put an end to anything naughty coming out of Hollywood. For fans of the genre, CONFESSIONS OF A VICE BARON should keep them entertained but it should be noted that this movie is pretty much edited together from other movies. The stuff dealing with the prisoner "confessing" is all new footage but the rest comes from movies like SMASHING THE VICE TRUST (lost outside the footage here), THE WAGES OF SIN, RACE SUICIDE, MAD YOUTH and THE PACE THAT KILLS, which is the only film not to have Castello actually in.

While this film isn't too bad and it only runs 58-minutes, it would still be wise to check out the other movies since you can seen them in their entirety. As you'd expect, the story here is pretty thin to say the least and there's no question that the quality ranges from bad to awful depending on which film you're actually watching. As for Castello, you can clearly call him one of the first kings of exploitation.

What seems to be based on the life and crimes of early 1930's Mafia pioneer Lucky Luciano the movie "Confessions of a Vice Baron" is the story of convicted death row convict Lucky Lombardo, Sing Sing inmate #1452, going to see the prison warden for a last visit. Lombardo is set to "let it all hang out" and go public about his sleazy and sordid life of crime. The life that he worked himself up, or down, from a suave and debonair gigolo to an illegal abortionist to a big time pimp and white-slave trafficker and finally murderer.

Lucky Lombaro wants his story to be published after his death in order to tells those who feel, like Lucky did, that crime does pay. In fact as Lucky tells it doesn't and he's the best case example to prove it. Going back into Lucky's past we see, in a number of badly spliced together 1930's and 40's exploitation movies, how he got to where he's now on death row. We get to see how in the end his hubris and arrogance did him in. Lucky started out basically in the sex trade and had girls as young as 13 kidnapped and forced into a life of prostitution.

In the beginning of his criminal career Lucky was only trying to survive by his ability of charming rich old and young women out of their savings. It was later as his appetite grew he got into more lucrative and criminal activities. Involved in an abortion and baby selling racket Lucky soon saw that it was the illegal white-slave and prostitution business where the money was and he decided to take it over.

After making it to the top of the rich vice and prostitution business with dozens of pimps madams and bordellos, as well as hundreds of call-girls, under his control Lucky came up against someone whom he could't knock or pay off: Special prosecutor and new state DA Selmer Jackson. The D.A is obviously styled after the real life New York special prosecutor District Attorney and later Governor Thomas Dewey. Dewey's the man who put real life Mafioso Lucky Luciano behind bars. It was D.A Selmer in the end got the goods on Lucky that eventually put him in the Sing Sing "Hot Seat".

Very graphic for it's time "Confessions of a Vice Baron" does show the movie going public, if they back then could find a theater that showed the film, what a bunch of despicable lowlifes hoods the likes of Lucky Lombardo really were. Not the cleaned up version of gangsters shown in Hollywood produced and released movies that were shown back then in the neighborhood theaters.

Willie Costello as Lucky Lombardo, AKA Van Hersten Kilonis De Kevon, looks like he's either on downers or very repentant as we see him telling his life story during splicing breaks in the movie. We see him in some half dozen or so films that he was previously in. With Costello getting either heavier or thinner as well as having or not having a mustache in the scenes that he's in.

The movie just stops short of having Lucky Lombardo being executed with Lucky looking straight into the camera and telling the audience "Let my fate be a warning to you that Crime Does Not Pay". That's followed by a screaming newspaper headline saying "Gang Chief Pays For his Crimes" as if he was already executed with the sub-title of the very same story saying "Lombardo to die at Midnight"! As if he were still alive and waiting to be executed!

This 1942 Willis Kent production stars the great Willy Castello as death-row inmate Lucky Lombardo, who offers to serve up a detailed "confession" of his criminal exploits to teach the younger generation that crime does not pay. These exploits are shown by clips from earlier Willis Kent productions starring Castello (!!!) and a few that he didn't star in. For instance, who can forget his role as the slimy pimp in Wages of Sin, or the oily gigolo in Mad Youth, or the unlicensed abortion doctor in Victims of Passion? They are all here, as well as the obscure Smashing The Vice Trust, which has not surfaced in the last few decades, but which looks fascinating. In addition, clips are shown from Kent's productions of Murder in the Museum (including a more explicit striptease that was spliced into later versions of the film, NOT found in the 1935 original) AND Cocaine Fiends, in which WC did not appear. The new footage of Castello is awkwardly lit and shot, looking like a stag film, and the warden and his secretary who listen to the testimony are poor performers, but as always Castello is a fascinating performer, suave and tough and charming and seedy. The static photography and flat inadequate lighting of the new footage really give the feel of a grim death-row setting, and Castello delivers the purple-prose script completely convincingly--as if he were Bogart delivering a Clifford Odets soliloquy. In a sense, this film is a "best-of" Willy Castello. Any lover of classic 1930s exploitation films should love this picture. Unfortunately, my copy is a bit splicy, but as a 60-year-old underground relic, we should be happy it exists at all. Castello only made a handful of films, but he created a searing image on the screen and will never be forgotten by fans of hard-boiled grindhouse cinema. Confessions of a Vice Baron is a fitting tribute to Castello's unique talent and to a genre of films that continues to fascinate viewers in a new century.

The original title is excellent as it positively explains what the film is about. It was re-issued under the name "Skid Row", which is senseless as it has nothing to do with drunken hobos. The film has basically no plot. It is just a series of sketches detailing what were once considered terrible vices. The film is now antiquated, the acting is abominable, and the direction is worse. It seems to be much older than its 1942 release date. It is difficult for me to write these comments as my father is acting in it (Noel Madison) as a "procurer" for the white slave trade (prostitution). I don't know which studio produced this film, but I have a feeling it may have been backed by the FBI under the "Crime Doesn't Pay" theme. The ending is a closeup of the vice-baron lecturing directly to the audience with the last line being "Crime Doesn't Pay". The movie is so bad, it's now laughable!

This movie is a must-have for exploitation film fans as it contains edited clips from a number of other movies within its overarching narrative. In essence, it is a "Best of Willy Castello" retrospective, rather cleverly strung together from bits and pieces of 1930s films in which this Dutch-born actor portrayed criminals. Identification of the movies in which the archival footage originated includes fragments from "Mad Youth" (Willy Castello as a gigolo), "Race Suicide" (Willy Castello as an abortion doctor), "The Pace That Kills" (better known under its reissue title "Cocaine Fiends" -- in which Willy Castello does not appear), and "Smashing the Vice Trust" (Willy Castello as crime lord James "Lucky" Lombado in a prostitution sub-plot). Although at least one of the movies from which the footage is drawn deals with drug use, that aspect of the story is discarded here entirely in favour of a focus on Castello's character as a despoiler of women, first as a gigolo, then as an abortion doctor, and finally as the crime boss who instigates two prostitution subplots -- one in which the focus is on the kidnapping of school girls and another in which he seduces a young woman and sends her to Fat Pearl's brothel when he tires of her. Exploitation of women is also evident in a dainty disrobing sequence in the abortionist's office and a noteworthily non-plot-driven side-show scene showcasing the belly dancers "Carmalita" and "Fatima" (pronounced "Fateema") from another Willis Kent production, "Murder in the Museum." My immediate reaction to this film was to try to identify the sources used in compiling it. Others, whose interests are not attuned to filmic trivia, might fault the story for lack of originality, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I liked it, although i realize its firmest audience base will be classic exploitation fans only.