Slaves in Bondage

Even the Grindhouse, I guess, can be a grind. I have to agree with the house here, this is a roadshow movie about brothels that manages to be a little dull. The great thing about this out of bounds genre of film is that in the case of, say, a "Maniac" it delivers something totally odd and out of left field. Here, with the production values at least up around the quality of the better poverty row, we get tame and very conventional fare, still a long way from conventionally good. For hard core students of this kind of thing only. IMDb want me to say more about it, but that pretty much tell the tale. Don't waste your time. It's bad.

1st watched 2/13/2007 - 3 out of 10(Dir-Elmer Clifton): Slightly watchable tale about a traveling prostitution circuit that sets up shop wherever it can until the police get a lead. The heads of the group disguise themselves as self-made rich people who somehow just know how to make money. The two heroines in the story, a couple who give links to the local newspaper, are just trying to get on their payroll to make enough money to get married but keep getting caught in the middle of this thing. The hero gets put in jail after the leader of the ring, Mr. Murray(who also happens to be a customer of his girlfriend), plants marked money on him and sends the cops in to arrest him. The rest of the movie, the girlfriend is trying to get him out on bail and is pulled into and introduced to the prostitutes by her boss at the nail saloon(who's doubling as the other leader of the ring). The acting is actually decent in this B movie, but the story is slow to progress and it just doesn't pull you into the plight. The situation just seems a little too canned and Hollywood'ized(as if that we're a word) to have any believability in the characters and their problems. I realize this is a late 30's movie with low production values but the artists don't have enough to make the story worthwhile to watch or credible. Not bad, but definitely could have been better.

Mary Lou manages to escape abduction by a prostitution ring.

She tells the Chief of Detectives they were planning to take her to the Berrywood road house, a well-known den of iniquity. Jim Murray and beautician Belle Harris are using her beauty shop to recruit floozies for their road house circuit.

Dona Lee, who works at the beauty salon, is falling in love with young reporter wanna-be Phillip, but Murray gets jealous and makes life rough for him. Meanwhile Dona begins to figure out the racket, but becomes threatened by Murray's unwanted advances.

This is one of those roadside productions from the mid thirties and early 40s that circumvented the censors by taking the movies across the country as a road show.

It's not a good movie, but is notable in that it demonstrates how the public cried out for more adult and scandalous movies, since nearly all of these films were a success.

Be prepared for a heavy handed story with pathetic acting.These are stories with a moral and like westerns where the bad guys always we're black, the villains are easy to discern.

Puhlenty of legs in the brothel. And lot's of girls in their undies. The movie was meant to titillate. Yes tame by today's standards, but an interesting historical curio piece.

Donald Reed wants to get a job on the local newspaper, so he can marry Lona Andre. She's a manicurist at Florence Dudley's shop. The place is just a front for recruiting girls; the real moneymaker is the disorderly house she runs with Wheeler Oakman.

He's a pretty good exploitation movie from the period, eked out with comic acrobats, lady contortionists, fan dancers and such extras. Without these, it wouldn't have been more than about forty minutes, far too brief for the sort of presentation that exploitation pictures used in those days: rent the movie theater, advertise heavily in the local papers about the educational aspect of the movie (mostly girls in their undies, and terms like "pink tea"), and keep all the receipts. This was called 'four-walling'.

Although most of the cast actually had movie careers -- very minor ones, but even so -- Oakman is the biggest name in the cast. He spent a lot of time in B westerns being villainous, and here he is, about to assault Miss Andre in a locked, soundproofed room. We know that Heaven will protect the working girl, and Miss Andre works as a manicurist, but what about the other girls who get into wrestling matches in their skivvies?

Explotive movie about the white slave or prostitution business back in the 1930's that was very graphic and reveling for it's time. This mob boss and his assistant Jim Murray and Good-Looking Freddie, Wheeler Oakman & Matty Roubert, who were out looking for new girls to work for Murray's bordello the Barrywood Road-House try to kidnap Mary Lou, Louise Small. Which turns out to be the downfall for the two thugs and their entire sleazy operation.

Getting away from the two Mary Lou's ordeal has the city and the local newspaper up in arms to put an end to Murray's squalid and unsavory racket that was a stain on all the good and law abiding people in town.

Raiding the Barrywood Road House the local newspaper get police mug shots of all the gangsters that were arrested there. Including Good-Looking Freddie who Mary Lou identifies and one of her kidnappers.

With Good-Looking Freddie jumping bail and then threatening both Murray and his madam at the Barrywood Road House Belle Harris, Florence Dudley, with exposer to the police Murray Punch him out cold and then has him shot and dumped out on the street.

We have a side plot in the movie with Mary Lou's sister Dona Lee, Lona Andre, and her fiancé out of work reporter Phil Miller, Donald Reed,needing money to get married so Dona Lee gets a job as a manicurist at a parlor run by Murray and Harris. Like with Mary Lou Murray gets very infatuated with her sister Dona Lee and in order to break up Dona Lee and her boyfriend Phil he has his boys plant marked money on him at a local bookie joint. Then tips off the police about Phil passing it, the hot money, off.

The cops secretly knowing that Phil was set up have him arrested to put Murray off guard as well as make him feel that he can have his way with Phil's girlfriend Dona Lee. But it's that very act that put Murray's and Harris out of the prostitution business and behind bars for a long time.

Standred flick about the dark side of the entertainment business and how young girls and women who are desperate for a job and money to survive are exploited and driven into the business of sex for profit. With almost all the profits going to sleaze-balls like Marray and Harris and not the young women who do all their dirty work.