User Reviews

When the police enter a house where a wife-swapping party is taking place, Creighton Hale thinks they have come for him. He has his wife, played by Virginia Brown Faire, intercede with his boss, from whom he has embezzled money to buy a necklace for his girlfriend. The boss suggests a way that Virginia can repay the money: become his mistress.

Because this is a Chesterfield Production, intended for the smaller cities, what would have been an early Pre-Code picture at one of the major studios becomes a moral and moralizing effort; Miss Faire remains virtuous throughout, Creighton Hale is revealed as an utterly contemptible cad and there is a happy ending. The effect is tawdry rather than silly... and was undoubtedly intended that way. It was a chance for its audience to imagine the lascivious goings-on and maintain their sense of self-righteousness, something not possible with a Pre-Code or the lavish spectacles offered by DeMille. Director Burton King directs his actors in a series of soulful looks. The cinematography by M.A. Anderson is ambitious, with lots of moving shots, but the overall result is ridiculous.

Creighton Hale was in a bunch of silent movies, but I remember him best as the man who played Miss Crabtree's brother in an early 1930's Our Gang. (Miss Crabtree was the Gang's teacher).

In this movie, he plays a husband who's gone wrong! He actually, and I'm not making this up, sells his wife to his boss! It's not for her to be his slave and obey his every command, but for sex! He had a marvelous speaking voice, but it would not have been worthy of him in this movie! It would have been a sniveling, kind of nasal tone.

Virginia Brown Faire! This movie gets an "5" because she doesn't go through with "it". It would be lower, because this really isn't that good a movie, but I give it a "5" because Virginia doesn't go through with it. I shudder to think how a movie in this day and age would have played out with this kind of plot! We see what kind of contemptible person Creighton is early on. He won't pay for his wife to have a pretty new dress, but he will buy a rather expensive necklace for Doris, who he wants to...bed. (Ick!) It doesn't stop there. He throws a party, not expecting for his wife to be there, in which the name of every woman at the party is put on a pool ball and the name on the ball you sink is who you get for the night. (Sort of a precursor to key parties...) Doris walks in and not too long after that, the gendarmes show up. Creighton thinks that the police are there to arrest him and he begs Virginia to go to his boss on his behalf. Virginia agrees to.

So she goes to his boss, played by Frank Whillock to negotiate her husband not being sent to where he frankly belongs, jail! Frank wastes no time telling him that he would forget the charges against her husband if she would go to bed with him.

Eventually, Virginia learns that she had been sold to Frank. Frank, unlike Creighton, has a good side. He's the one that tells Virginia about it all. Virginia then drives back to the home she shares with Creighton.

She overhears Creighton, who arrives later, on the phone telling Doris to come on over, that he has the money ($50,000) so that they can go away and do what they want in their own love nest.

Virginia comes out, compliments him on his coup and asks about the money, being as seductive as she can (which really wasn't much). She gets the check away from him and lets him have it (verbally).

Not too long after that, Doris shows up. She expresses surprise at Virginia being there. Virginia then tells her what's going on and tells Doris she is welcome to her husband. Doris says "Not without his fortune!" and leaves.

For some reason, which is why I don't think this isn't that good a movie, she falls for Frank, the guy who paid for her! Virginia, you don't deserve a Santa Claus!

Really, without Virginia saying "no", this is a "2" at most. Don't waste you time with this.

By the humble standing of Poverty Row's Chesterfield Productions, this is not such a bad movie as other reviewers make out. Burton L. King directed one of my favorite pictures, "The Adorable Cheat", just before "House of Shame", and therefore, as might be expected, he brings the same classy approach to this far less superior but still interesting pre-Code "B"-grade offering. For a start, he gets realistic performances all around, particularly from his four principals, namely beautiful, sympathetic Virginia Brown Faire, the whining Clayton's husband (i.e. the husband you have when you're not having a husband), crooked-as-they-come Creighton Hale, the floozy Florence Dudley (who delivers the villain his just desserts), and most particularly the Clayton's villain himself, namely manly, personable, charismatic Lloyd Whitlock. Available on a very high standard Grapevine DVD.