Confessions of a Vice Baron

Confessions of a Vice Baron (1943)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining exploitation picture has a prisoner (Willy Castello) about to be put to death but before that he walks into the wardens office and asks to talk. It seems the prisoner wants to talk about his life in crime so that hopefully others will hear the stories and decide to take a different path in life.

The exploitation roadshow had its biggest period during the mid to late 30's once the Hayes Office started to put an end to anything naughty coming out of Hollywood. For fans of the genre, CONFESSIONS OF A VICE BARON should keep them entertained but it should be noted that this movie is pretty much edited together from other movies. The stuff dealing with the prisoner "confessing" is all new footage but the rest comes from movies like SMASHING THE VICE TRUST (lost outside the footage here), THE WAGES OF SIN, RACE SUICIDE, MAD YOUTH and THE PACE THAT KILLS, which is the only film not to have Castello actually in.

While this film isn't too bad and it only runs 58-minutes, it would still be wise to check out the other movies since you can seen them in their entirety. As you'd expect, the story here is pretty thin to say the least and there's no question that the quality ranges from bad to awful depending on which film you're actually watching. As for Castello, you can clearly call him one of the first kings of exploitation.