Gambling With Souls

Starring:Martha Chapin, Wheeler Oakman, Bryant Washburn, Gay Sheridan, Vera Steadman, Edward Keane, Robert Frazer, Gaston Glass, Florence Dudley, Eddie Laughton, Janet Eastman
Director: Elmer Clifton
Studio: Alpha Video
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

"You filthy operator of a sex exchange."
It's a bust!
Dedicated To Avoidance of Vice.....And To Profits

Gambling With Souls
Starring: Martha Chapin , Wheeler Oakman , Bryant Washburn , Gay Sheridan , and Vera Steadman
Director: Elmer Clifton
Manufacturer: Alpha Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

Classics | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

4-for-3 All DVDs | 4-for-3 DVD | Stores | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $9.99 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( G ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

Mad Youth
Slaves In Bondage
Congessions of a Vice Baron
Flesh Merchant: The Wild and Wicked
The Road to Ruin/No Greater Sin

ASIN: B0002W4UGQ
Release Date: 2004-10-26

Customer Reviews:

"You filthy operator of a sex exchange.".......2005-09-21

Strict censorship rules of the Hays Code spawned the production of many sexploitation films--films that were presented as exposes of the lurid charms of various human vices. These films took a strong moral stance against these vices and illustrated the inevitable consequences of sin while indulging the audience with an excuse for puerile voyeurism.

In "Gambling with Souls", Mae Miller (Martha Chapin) is married to a doctor (Robert Frazer). He's devoted to his career, and she's left to her own devices for long periods of time. She becomes friends with Molly Murdock (Vera Steadman) who quickly introduces her to gambling. Gambling is just the first step into luring Mae into prostitution to pay off the money she owes to gambling club owner, Lucky Wilder (Wheeler Oakman).

"Gambling with Souls" contains a strong strain of Victorian melodrama ("you who thrive in the slime of life")--with the righteous husband appearing ("women are not always to blame for their downfall"), and the wicked, repentant wife sobbing her way through a confession of her life of sin.

For camp fans, there's a mild degree of entertainment here. Some of the lines are very funny, and there's one scene in a club that shows a girl dancing, but she's more of a contortionist than a dancer. She gets up on top of one of the tables, and hikes her skirt up, displaying her undies as she performs contortionist acts. It's supposed to be sexy--at least that's the impression I get from the men in the audience drooling as they watch her performance. There's another scene with a chorus line, and the camera focuses on the girls' bottoms for an inordinate amount of time. One scene (reminiscent of Hylas and the Nymphs) shows a country bumpkin lured off to a bedroom by a gang of pushy prostitutes. My favourite scene shows Mae returning from a drunken night out. She strips in her bedroom, and even her underwear has become fancier as her sins increase. Those moments provide a vague amusement, but that's about all. The moralizing is too heavy handed and the characters serve to fill their stock roles only.

The Alpha Video print isn't that great--there's some skipping and crackling, but it is watchable--displacedhuman

It's a bust!.......2005-06-22

Cautionary tale from 1936 about gambling and the dire effects it has on those who fall into its foul grasp.
Martha Chapin plays the pretty platinum wife of an up and coming doctor who is introduced to The Club by her false best friend Molly.
This is an early "Adult Only" feature that proudly promised to show "Women of today sold into bondage" and "Scarlet girls chained to the vultures of vice." In other words, like Reefer Madness, Slaves in Bondage, Maniac, and other movies of their ilk, a veneer of a social message was spread over a pit of vice, the veneer being just thick enough to allow the film to be released, if only on the vaudeville circuit.
Okay, gambling is bad and Martha Chapin - Mae Miller in the movie - is soon $10,000 in debt - a fortune in 1936. False friend Molly had arranged, with the gambling den owner, for this to happen. Mae becomes Molly's girl #78 and her descent begins in earnest.
Although there's a healthy story-to-sleaze ratio in this one, the real reason it was made was to show Mae changing from bed clothes to silk gown and from day clothes to bed clothes. To delight us with an extended scene of her first night of iniquity with `Million Dollar' Taylor and regale us with a gaggle of goosey shady women teasing a dour hayseed. Racy stuff for the day but this one would barely rate a PG today. From camera angles to naughty words GAMBLING WITH SOULS is the soul of discretion.
The platinum haired Chapin has four more movie credits than I do, and since acting was low on the list of what was being asked of her I'd say she turned in a credible job. I added a star for the snarl she wears after The Fall. Makes her look kind of like a cross between Jane Russell and Elvis Presley.
I don't have a developed appreciation for campy movies, so fans of that type of film may enjoy GAMBLING WITH SOULS more than I did. The transfer print is in rough shape, with a number of frames missing in many spots.

Dedicated To Avoidance of Vice.....And To Profits.......2005-03-29

Dedicated To Avoidance of Vice.....And To Profits.

The highly-publicized success in 1936 of Thomas Dewey in disassembling the vice-focussed operations of "Lucky" Luciano spawned a raft of exploitative films such as this one (also titled VICE RACKET), an advertisement for which states "Soiled souls in the marts of a great city......sensational events as recently seen in the nation's headlines", a popular item for many years in those side street theatres that presented movies showcasing flesh and decadence while ostensibly offering an "educational" service to alert audiences of the wages of sin and lust. Although in love with her financially straitened surgeon husband, Mae Miller (Martha Chapin) becomes frustrated because with only a budding practice, he cannot provide for her those luxuries that her friends enjoy, and she is easily lured by an acquaintance to an illegal gambling establishment where she soon becomes addicted to the feckless thrill of wagering, that leads to more dire events after she falls into a state of substantial indebtedness to the club's crafty owner. This is Lucky Wilder (Wheeler Oakman) who places extreme pressure through a threat of blackmail upon Mrs. Miller since her debt to him has exceeded $10000, an enormous amount during the Great Depression, and Mae is compelled to become a call girl for Wilder in order to pay the vicemaster what she owes him, but events still worsen for the doctor's wife when her younger sister Carolyn (Gay Sheridan) is entrapped in the same manner. The scenario is related in flashbacks, with a District Attorney's office as setting of the present where Mae is being grilled as an accused murder suspect, characterized by the D.A. as "You who thrive on the slime of life", and yet the case has not been decided for Mae Miller in this quite sleazily-toned but competently constructed low-budget potboiler that is well-edited and ably directed by Elmer Clifton, who in his palmy days had been a favoured director for the Gish sisters, with perky Sheridan and well-practiced villain Oakman both convincing in their roles.

DVD:

DVD

DVD

DVD

Mach 2

Chaplin Mutuals, Vol. 3 : DVD

Great Balls of Fire! (REGION 1) (NTSC)

DVD: Foolish Wives / The Man You Loved to Hate

Carolina - Auf der Suche nach Mr. Perfect