Directed by: Howard Higgin
Starring: Junior Durkin, Pat O’Brien, Bette Davis

WE ALL START SOMEWHERE
Hell’s House was not Bette Davis’s first film, she had already appeared in several pictures, but it came very early in her career, in 1932, before she became BETTE DAVIS, one of Hollywood’s defining stars.
Before Jezebel. Before Now, Voyager. Before All About Eve. Before two Academy Awards and one of the most celebrated careers in Hollywood history, Bette Davis was still a young actress trying to establish herself.
Hell’s House catches Davis at that fascinating moment: not yet the star, but already recognizable as the actress who would become one. She wasn’t carrying the picture—Junior Durkin was—but audiences today get the wonderful experience of looking backward and thinking, There she is.

Everybody starts somewhere.
Bette Davis started near the beginning in films like Hell’s House.

STORY
Young Jimmy Mason is suddenly orphaned and sent to live with his aunt and uncle, where he becomes fascinated by their charismatic boarder, Matt Kelly. Jimmy thinks Kelly is a well-connected man about town. What he doesn't understand is that his new hero is actually a bootlegger — and Jimmy is about to learn just how expensive misplaced loyalty can become.
When Jimmy goes to work for Kelly and the operation is raided, the boy refuses to identify the man who employed him. His loyalty earns him a brutal punishment: Jimmy is sentenced to a state industrial school for boys. Behind its walls, he discovers an institution where punishment has replaced rehabilitation and vulnerable children are subjected to exhausting labor and appalling conditions. Jimmy befriends Shorty, a physically fragile boy whose suffering makes the institution's cruelty impossible to ignore.
Hell’s House is more than an early Bette Davis picture. Made during the final years of Prohibition and before Hollywood's Production Code was rigidly enforced, it takes aim at a system capable of treating a loyal, naïve child more harshly than the adults who exploited him. The movie may be more than ninety years old, but its central question remains disturbingly recognizable: What happens when the institution that's supposed to protect children becomes part of the problem?

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS

BEFORE BETTE BECAME BETTE
Bette Davis was still at the beginning of her extraordinary film career when she appeared in Hell’s House. The commanding screen legend audiences would later know from Jezebel, Now, Voyager and All About Eve was still establishing herself in Hollywood.

BETTE WAS ON LOAN
Davis was under contract to Universal, which loaned her to B. F. Zeidman Productions for Hell’s House. Her presence today gives this independently produced picture an importance it could never have anticipated in 1932.

THE TITLE WASN’T ALWAYS HELL’S HOUSE
The film had the working title Juvenile Court. Contemporary copyright material also used the title Misguided for its synopsis.

THE REAL STAR OF THE STORY
Modern audiences may come to Hell’s House because they recognize Bette Davis and Pat O’Brien, but the dramatic center of the movie belongs to Junior Durkin as Jimmy Mason. His character's journey drives the story.

PRE-CODE HOLLYWOOD
Released in 1932, Hell’s House comes from Hollywood's fascinating Pre-Code period, before strict enforcement of the Production Code dramatically changed what American movies could portray. Its bootlegging, institutional corruption and treatment of juvenile prisoners give the film some surprisingly tough subject matter.

PROHIBITION IS PART OF THE STORY
Matt Kelly's bootlegging operation isn't merely vintage gangster decoration. The movie arrived while Prohibition was still the law of the land. The 18th Amendment would not be repealed until the following year, making the criminal world surrounding Jimmy contemporary reality for the film's original audience.

AN INDIE BEFORE “INDIE” WAS A BRAND
Hell’s House was produced by B. F. Zeidman Productions, rather than one of Hollywood's dominant major studios. That makes this early Bette Davis film especially at home on Absolutely Indie Network: independent filmmaking has been finding ways to get movies made for a very long time.