Hell's House

1932 was Davis's 2nd year in Hollywood, the end of her first year of making movies, and this was her sixth movie--the first for which she received top billing. She has a few good scenes as bootlegger Matt's girlfriend. Matt has befriended young Jimmy, and gives him a job. Poor Jimmy...his mother dies, he comes to the big city as an orphan, is busted his first day on the job and sent to reform school (itself badly in need of reform). There's a down-and-out realism to this that's rather haunting.

Passes the time.

A drowsy slow drama about a teenager who loses his mother and ends up in reform school because of the influence of bootlegger Pat O'Brien. The kid played by Junior Durkin was a sympathetic character, but this movie was so boring that no one could save it from the direction of Howard Higgin. Not even a young Bette Davis who played support as O'Brien's girlfriend.