The obvious pandering to the prurient prudery of the American movie-going public, the brazen commercialization of a morbid interest in social disease and sex delinquency, found in a long line of "For Adults Only" pictures, from "Is Your Daughter Safe" of years ago, to the current "Road to Ruin," is a revolting commentary on the rule of King Dollar. The advertising of such films is calculated to make the adolescent-minded public believe that fornication and other assorted lecheries are shown in all their nakedness on the screen, gotten past the censors by a thin veneer of hypocritical "educational" advice to young girls and harassed mothers. The public, needless to say, is always disappointed, and might better get its vicarious sexual satisfaction from a Mae West opus; but the suckers continue to pack the theatres, and the producers continue to reap a golden harvest.

"The Road to Ruin," now offered for the delectation of the morbidly curious and the curiously morbid at the Majestic, is probably less dull than most of its predecessors, being saved by the ingenious idea of having a father unaware of his high school daughter's fallen state and a daughter unaware of her conference-attending father's peccadilloes recognize each other on the brink of incest. The quick swoop of the lustful hawk onto his defenceless prey and the horror of the ensuing recognition provide a few tense moments in the long and wearisome record of the ruination of Ann Dixon.

Ann is a pretty little girl, of good family, whose parents have never told her, and who finds out to her sorrow from a bad boy, a bad girl, and a bad man. Her first cigarette, her first cocktail, and her first kiss are not followed in quick succession by her first illegitimate child only because her lover has a hundred dollars to hire a doctor. The shock of almost being had by her father on the night after her abortion (a rape is only a rape, they say, but this somehow seems a little more) is too much, and she dies with her penitent pater and no less penitent though virtuous mater at her bedside, resolving to tell their next daughter what's what before it's too late. The fade-out is a sweetly murmured "Daddy... It seemed like such a beautiful road...but it was only..." The slimy scoundrel who debauched her is presumably out wreaking his lustful will on more sweet trusting girls. It's the woman who pays!

Impossible characters, an unbelievable plot, and complete disregard of the life-work of Margaret Sanger rob the picture of any value as sex-education propaganda. The association of passionate osculation with such things as positive Wasserman reactions and unsanitary abortions is not, however, without effect. The reviewer heard a damsel who had all the earmarks of an inmate of a local institution of higher learning for females remark after the show, "I don't see how a girl could ever want to kiss anyone again after seeing that."