Slaves in Bondage (1937)

Slaves in Bondage
Directed by Elmer Clifton
Written by Robert Dillon
1937/USA
Jay-Dee-Kay Productions
First viewing

[box] Tagline: Society Beauties by Day! Party Girls by Night![/box]

Sure this exploitation film is terrible, but is it terrible in a good way?

As our film opens, Mary Lou is screaming in a car.  She then opens the door to flee and ends up unconscious on the road, where she is coincidentally rescued by her housemate Dona’s wannabe reporter boyfriend Philip.  It turns out Mary Lou was abducted by white slavers on her way home from church.  Philip takes the story to the local newspaper and it becomes headline news.  He continues to investigate in hopes of landing a job and marrying Dona.

Naturally, Dona works as a manicurist at the beauty salon operated by Belle, the madam of the white slave house of ill-repute, as a front and her main customer is Jim Murray, the gang’s ringleader.  Jim has the hots for Dona and frames Philip for some crime involving marked bills to get him out of the way.  He then tricks Dona into meeting him at the bordello where Belle gives her a tour of the “merchandise” (the true selling-point of this film).  It all ends in a free-for-all featuring some of the worst fake  fist fighting in film history.   The story is peppered with some laughable vaudeville acts and some tame fan-dancing.

OK, it goes without saying that nobody can act and the script is pathetic.  The film is not without its little joys.  I particularly liked the part where Philip is looking for a phone to call in the story about the shooting of one of the gang members and a man appears in a nearby window with a rotary phone in his hands.  The scenes at the bordello seemed to have been conceived in the imagination of an eleven-year old boy with a yen for lesbians. Over all, there is more naughtiness in 1936’s Marihuana (also reviewed here).  This one is funnier, though.

Trailer – do not watch if you are offended by hanky panky!