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Just came across this. You can see this "exploitation" full hour-8-minute movie here, for free:
http://www.rtbot.net/play.php?id=8m0KmONqQ-k
When the police raid Lucky Wilder’s combination gambling den and whorehouse, they arrive just in time to find ex-housewife Mae Miller (MARTHA CHAPIN) standing over Wilder’s body with a gun in her hand and a snarl on her face. Which begs the obvious: how, pray tell, did the formerly respectable wife of a socially-upstanding doctor become a homicidal ho? Well, that’s precisely the plot of Gambling with Souls (aka The Vice Racket), one of the better roadshow epics, chock full of crime, vice, and unintentional hilarity, which is summed up rather nicely by an angry D.A. who shouts in her face: “It’s women of your kind that must be brought to justice! You who thrive in the slime of life! Who keep clubs like the one we raided open to lure your victims out of their doom, until you climax your vile life with the drastic crime of murder!”
Dipsy blonde Mae loves her husband (ROBERT FRAZER, best known for White Zombie) as much as she loves money. Unfortunately, her hubby just can’t afford to give her all she wants, so when she runs into “best friend” Molly Murdoch at a garden party, Molly suggests Mae try her luck at a swanky gambling club: “The Devil’s Playground!” Idiot that she is, Mae thinks it’s a wonderful idea. Especially when she starts winning, or, rather, is allowed to win: “How was I to know I was just a dupe! That it was a game to lead me on!”
And when she starts losing, the club keeps extending credit until she can’t possibly pay it back. Worse, the club is run by mobster Lucky Wilder (the ubiquitous WHEELER OAKMAN) and Molly is his partner in crime. Double worse, Molly runs Wilder’s call-girl racket, where women are given numbers rather than names: “Number 33 calling!” (We see two kinds of girls here: the happy little bombshell with a motor in her hips, and the burnt-out ho’s who lounge around in wrinkled lingerie. Hot stuff for ’36.)
As expected, Walker demands Mae pay up the $10,300 she owes the club or they’ll tell her husband: “I can’t! I can’t!” The solution: Mae can work it off by “entertaining” certain gentlemen. Just a few at first until….
Well, you all know where this is going, right? Sure enough, Mae quickly turns into a drunken floozy turning tricks at some squalid whorehouse “in the slums.” Wilder and Molly, meanwhile, are busy recruiting an innocent new girl who just happens to be – are you ready? – Mae’s kid sister! But when sis dies of a botched abortion, Mae finally goes gunning for Wilder: “He gambled with souls!”
Yeah, this one’s a lot of fun. Preposterous, gleefully melodramatic, and hilariously sordid, Gambling with Souls is typical roadshow rudeness which, once again, reminds us that the ultimate destination for a wayward woman is the local whorehouse. Truth be told, we can’t help but enjoy Mae’s descent into degradation, and suspect that’s exactly what producer J.D. KENDIS and director ELMER CLIFTON had in mind.
From a 35mm print “Stripped of Its Outer Clothing!”-- Mr. Daddy-O
Robert
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