The Road To Ruin (1934) / No Greater Sin (1941) (Forbidden Classics Double Feature)

Starring: Luanna Walters & Mae Busch

Venereal disease ruins the life of a young man in this exploitation classic / A call-girl finds herself in a compromising position with her own father.

Nothing beats a lurid, grubby, early 1930's roadshow/exploitation film - the kind which seldom reached the major movie houses, and were made by poverty row studios. Everyone knows the cult exploitation doper Reefer Madness, but a plethora of scare films came out during that era to warn youth to curb their wanton ways, supposedly alert their parents, and curtail the potentiality of socially unacceptable behavior - or so the "square-up" scrolls preceding these films would like us to think. Under the guise of preaching against the sinful excesses of our culture, exploitation films were unregulated by the mainstream Hollywood Production Code, and patrons would line up for blocks to see "daring" films of shocking subject matter under the guise of being warned what young people were getting into, and to be instructed of the dangers of drug abuse and sexual misconduct. Generally these stories concerned respectable teenagers from nice middle class homes who were inadvertently, under the influence of their peers, swept into a seamy party world of drinking, drug use, gambling, strip poker, and sexual experimentation. That first puff of a cigarette or first sip of bootleg hooch at the roadhouse or speakeasy led to dissipated practices resulting in addiction, venereal disease, pregnancy, abortion, and death.

The Road to Ruin combines all of these elements: "nice" high school students who experiment with smoking, drinking, and making out, but woe betide them in the local roadhouse where, after participating in some hilariously mediocre musical numbers, the boys accompanying their dates drink too much and the girls need to be taken home by some older men who are regular customers. Next thing we know, the girls are avid party animals, playing strip games with dice and swimming nude at adult parties, finally rounded up by the local vice squad as "sexual delinquents" . I won't give away the grim end of this cautionary tale, but there's lots of smarmy entertainment in this shabby old shocker and it results in the audience's horrified snicker every second.

Even better than this one, and unfortunately nowhere in print on dvd although another company offers it on vhs, is "Guilty Parents" which even tops Road to Ruin in the vile tale of a Good Girl Gone Bad. Apparently teenage girls were mot to be let out of the sight of their parents or they would be immediately be swept into lives of the most lurid and dissipated of infamous debauchery. This is a film which deserves to be dug up by Alpha and made available on dvd, and soon.

No Greater Sin is a somewhat tiresome, wartime vd instruction film which is of a more ploddingly edifying nature than the rambunctious melodrama of films from the previous decade.