Gambling with Souls (1936)

In the 1930s, there were numerous exploitation flicks positioned as cautionary tales. They were about one of the many issues of the times and how those issues could lead people down dangerous paths. Reefer Madness, also known as Tell Your Children, was about the problems with marijuana. The Cocaine Fiends was about, you guessed it, cocaine. There were many others that covered many other subjects, as well, such as this week’s movie, Gambling with Souls. It took on gambling as a major problem.

The need to inform the public about the problems with each topic wasn’t necessarily the reason for making the movies, however. They were exploitation flicks. They exploited the subjects to get an audience. It wasn’t enough that the filmmakers were warning people away from certain vices. They were warning people away from drugs and gambling. The filmmakers needed to do more than that. They needed to make the movies controversial by showing how bad each vice was. Things were heightened beyond realism.

Take Reefer Madness, for example. The opening was a series of title cards explaining what was about to unfold. Marijuana was such a bad substance that it would do terrible things to your mind. It would cause you to go into fits of anger, possibly leading to you becoming a murderer. That then played out on screen as people were lured into the world of recreational marijuana smoking. They ended up in fits of laughter. They ended up in fits of rage. Fights would break out that would eventually lead to murder by gun. All this because of the effect that marijuana had on the users.

Of course, we know now that this isn’t true. Marijuana doesn’t make people want to kill one another. In fact, it usually has the opposite effect. Most people become more chill, more mellow, after smoking marijuana. Sure, there are some bad trips in there. Usually it has a calming effect, though. It’s not going to turn someone into a rage monster out for the kill. It makes Reefer Madness look like a ridiculous dramatization of something that wouldn’t happen. Because it is a ridiculous dramatization of something that wouldn’t happen.

The same could be said for Gambling with Souls. Mae Miller (Martha Chapin) wasn’t satisfied with her financial situation. Her husband didn’t make enough money for her to spend freely. She took matters into her own hands. Mae began to gamble. At first, it seemed fine. She was winning. Then her luck turned. Lucky Wilder (Wheeler Oakman) rigged the games so that players would go into debt. To pay her debt to Lucky, Mae became a prostitute. Eventually, her guilt got to her, and she did the only thing she could think of to put an end to it. She took Lucky’s life.

Gambling with Souls fit right into the cautionary tale stories of the 1930s. It wasn’t about drugs, but it was about addiction. It was about gambling addiction. It took liberties with gambling addiction to tell a much more exploitative story. The people who run gambling houses and casinos are in the business to make money. If people lose at the slot machines or poker tables, they make money. The house always wins. That’s all there is to it. Simple as that. It doesn’t matter who is affected. The people spending their money on the games are just another paycheck. There’s nothing personal about it, even if lives are being destroyed.

That wasn’t the case in Gambling with Souls. The source of money became personal. Lucky was coercing women into becoming an entirely different source of income. He was personally pulling them into the gambling lifestyle so they would owe him money. That way, he could force them into prostitution to pay off their debts. He not only got their money when they gambled, but he got their money when they started participating in sex work. It was a 2-for-1 deal and he was all in.

I’m sure that some people get into sex work for similar reasons to this. They owe someone money, or they have to pay off some sort of debt. The one way they know how to is to cater to the horny people willing to pay. But there are many cases where sex workers do that work because they want to. They actively choose to do sex work and enjoy it. It’s supposed to be one of the world’s oldest professions, so that only makes sense. Yet there are the few that end up there because of their financial situation. Or others who are forced into it.

Gambling with Souls decided to connect gambling and prostitution, and look down upon both. It turned gambling addiction into something to be punished for, rather than something that people might need help overcoming. It turned gambling into a gateway for other, more nefarious business. That business was sex work, something that the movie posited nobody would ever want to be involved with. Unless you were an evil mobster sort of person. Gambling would lead to prostitution, which would lead to murder. That was the cautionary tale of Gambling with Souls.

The 1930s were a big time for cautionary tales. The only thing was that the cautionary tales were presented with a heavy heaping helpful of exploitation. They would be seen alongside something even more taboo to get people interested in the movies. There had to be some sort of added twist to get people interested in seeing the cautionary tale. Gambling with Souls couldn’t simply be about the troubles of gambling addiction. There had to be sex and murder thrown in. Reefer Madness wasn’t only about marijuana addiction. It was about murders that it could lead to. Everything was much more dire than it needed to be. It was sexier and more violent. It was exploitation under the guise of cautionary tale.

There are still some cautionary tale style films out there. The major ones, however, don’t play as much into the exploitative aspects as they did in the 1930s. Film techniques being crafted and honed have helped to make the language of the moving picture much more attention-grabbing. There are better visuals, better performances, and overall better quality in the cautionary tales now than there were in the 1930s.

The exploitative antics have kind of moved into the world of news, with sensationalized headlines taking cues from those early cautionary tale films. Instead of movies tying addiction into murder, there are headlines about the newest fad that could kill children. The level of exploitative cautionary tales has subsided in the film world, but it still continues to permeate through other means. Will we find this era as entertaining in years to come? Probably not.

Let’s get these notes in here and head out:

• Reefer Madness (week 339) and The Cocaine Fiends (week 424) were mentioned in this post.
• Gay Sheridan was in both Gambling with Souls and The Cocaine Fiends (week 424).
• Have you seen Gambling with Souls? Have you seen any of the 1930s cautionary tale movies? What did you think of them? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
• You can find me on Twitter or in the comments if you have any movies that you think would be good fits for Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’ve been compiling the next part of the schedule and I’ve already put a few suggestions in there. You could have one in there, too.
• Make sure to go to Instagram to see more Sunday “Bad” Movies stuff all week long.
• Next week is a big week. It’s a franchise week. That’s right, I’ll be tackling another franchise next week, and it’s a big one. Not so much in the infamous bad movies way, though they do sometimes come into the conversation. They’re big in as much as it’s a franchise that everyone knows and many people find annoying. I’ll be checking out the Alvin and the Chipmunks live-action flicks for next week’s post. If you want to see what I have to say, join me next week for another post. See you then!