Street of Forgotten Women (1927)
** (out of 4)
Grace is a very rich girl whose father owns several high class businesses. She decides that she wants to go on the stage as a dancer and when her father hears this he kicks her out. Now on her own, Grace tries to produce her own show but when it's a bust she's now homeless. She decides to do erotic dancing and this leads to prostitution.
STREET OF FORGOTTEN WOMEN is a film that there's not too much information out there about it. There aren't any cast or crew credits on the print and it seems that there aren't many, if any, publicity materials out there. This here is basically the fake type of morality tale where exploitation producers were trying to pass off risky material as education. The film starts off with a very long Forward about how streets are full of the rich and the poor and that everyone has a story.
The story of Grace is pretty much that she's spoiled, gets kicked out by rich daddy and soon finds herself poor and having to resort to prostitution. That's the entire plot and it fits nicely into this 52-minute movie. This thing isn't good. It's certainly not bad. There's just nothing here that makes it anything more than a decent time killer if you're a fan of the genre. If you're looking for anything naughty or dirty then you'll be disappointed as the entire story is told in a rather tame way.
While there's nothing ground-breaking here, it's still interesting to watch STREET OF FORGOTTEN WOMEN just so you can see what an exploitation picture from this era was like. As we know, once sound came into play producers were willing to be a lot more naughty with the material.