Awesome Movie

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Is it as bad as the reviews suggest - sort of!! Sally O'Neill was lovely. Her best films were at the start of her career with "Sally, Irene and Mary" and "Battling Butler" but 1929 was her most prolific year. Her voice matched her "little girl takes on the big city and wins" persona and she made 8 films. After that, opportunities really fell away, a chaotic personal life didn't help and apparently she felt bitter against Hollywood for her ups and downs. "The Moth" was one of her last films and saw her as Diana, a wild party girl who spends her money like water until the tank runs dry. For some reason I had the idea with a name like "The Moth" it was going to be an espionage tale but it was just another spoilt rich kid shows her mettle yarn.Diana is so over drawn on her account that she only has $300 left for the entire year (and reading of Sally's real financial woes this was a part she could obviously play in her sleep)!! A drunken party where Diana's obscene dance makes the front page and the night court is the last straw!! Under the provisions of her father's will she is now on her own until she shows she can make good!! George Duncan (Paul Page, nearing the end of his career) is given the job of bringing her into line and follows her to New Orleans - but just who is watching who?? You see she can remember bumping into him at her uncle's office - and immediately smells a rat!!On the train she meets another girl who is ducking a detective and she innocently teams up. But this girl is the real deal - she is Marie La Marr, "The Moth" of the title and she and her boyfriend (future "Cisco Kid" star Duncan Renaldo) are crooks fleeing from the law down to the Mardi Gras where they expect to do a booming business in jewelry theft! (Apparently Rae Dagget's best known role was Marie, "The Moth", poor thing)!! They find Diana the perfect patsy for unloading some of their stolen trinkets.Another party hurrying to New Orleans is Diana's uncle looking about 60 but with some very un-uncley designs on his niece. Just like a real moth, the film was pretty drab and dowdy. There was a real opportunity missed to get Diana into the real world of unemployment and poverty - letting her find a real job but they opt for the old runaway heiress lark!!

In "The Moth", Sally O'Neil plays Diana Wyman. Wyman is a spoiled brat living off an inheritance. However, instead of using the money slowly or with common sense, she blows it on booze, wild parties and the like. Because of this, she's out of money for the year--and she still has seven more months to go. So how does she deal with this? She goes off on a binge and is caught by the police doing some sort of lewd dance. Later, after stomping off and informing her guardian that she can 'take care of herself', she runs off to New Orleans to party at the Mardi Gras! Now all this is during the height of the Depression--and I wonder how audiences of the day felt as they watched this completely self- absorbed brat on her adventures.On the way to New Orleans, Diana spots a man who is following her and she assumes he's a detective hired by her guardian. At the same time, a notorious criminal, 'the Moth', is being followed by a detective. The pair of women end up becoming friends and hang out together in New Orleans--and I really couldn't have cared less about their adventures or about Diana!The film is not just badly written but it presents a leading lady so horrid that you didn't care about her budding romance later in the film- -you just wanted to see her run over by a bus! Not enjoyable in the least.

Frankly, I didn't find it that much worse than most other movies of the period -- the ones that came from studios with names like PRC, Eagle Lion, Monogram, Gower Gulch, Poverty Row. It goes without saying that some of these were artistic treasures. I proffer the excellent Hungarian studio, Az Éhezéstől, as a European producer of aesthetic achievements on tiny budgets.Consider that the equipment of the time was cumbersome. With sound, the noisy cameras had to be hidden in a blimp-shaped container known to the industry cognoscenti as a "blimp." The microphones could be found in buttonholes and vases. Ladies in long dresses might be trailing wires.Speech being new, coaches and actors were brought in from the theater and ordinary pronunciation turned into elocution for many actors. Example here: Wilfred Lucas as the attorney in charge of Sally O'Neil's trust fund. Every phoneme is as precise as the constituents of an expensive Swiss watch.As the flapper, on the other hand, Sally O'Neil cannot shake the damp the echoes of Bayonne, New Jersey, in her lines. Bayonne, once known as the garden spot of the industrial North, has two well-known features: a multitude of ruddy great oil storage tanks and a magnificent view of the skyline of New York City across the Hudson. Frank Langella is from Bayonne. So were Sandra Dee and Brian Keith. So let's have no more aspersions cast on Bayonne.Anyway, Sally O'Neil, whose star dimmed with the coming of sound, plays a reckless society girl whose money disappears. Fortunately, her legs don't disappear. They are featured in the film's first shot, and they're long and shapely. Later, at a drunken party, she waltzes around in her underwear, in a very artistic scene of the sort that was permitted in the pre-code period. She really is cute.Humiliated, O'Neil skips town for New Orleans, followed by the man who's been asked to keep an eye on her, Paul Page. Page overacts outrageously but that's okay because everyone else does too. It's Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It's always Mardi Gras in New Orleans in the movies. Two clearly gay guys flirt with Page on the street. There is some genuinely interesting footage of a real Mardi Gras parade, circa 1930, inserted at this point.Summing it all up, O'Neil gets mixed up with a thief and his moll. Page becomes her boy friend. It all ends in such a way that the viewer will emit a satisfied sigh.

"The Moth" is a stupefyingly bad movie that fails on every level imaginable. Apparently written by a high school drama club, it contains some of the most severe overacting ever seen on the silver screen, and it is evident why this film has not been seen since its release.As stated in the summary, "The Moth" is a female jewel thief but there is no plot twist or device here to interest anyone, cinephile or not. In fact, it is devoid of suspense and substance and it is hard to tell if it is just a poor drama or an unfunny comedy. I bought it from Alpha Video and it is not their fault it is an inferior motion picture. They probably have never seen it, and I wish I could say the same. With luck, this will be the only review ever posted for "The Moth". Hate to think someone else got stuck with this dog of a film. Little care was taken in the production of this picture and it spoils the viewers' enjoyment.