I love this movie so much

An action-packed slog

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Don't let the fancy costume on the DVD box fool you; "The Moth" is not another attempt for the exotic a la "Madam Satan". If this costume as part of a Mardis Gras celebration appeared, it has been cut and only utilized as a selling point for this late pre-code drama that has a few interesting moments but is basically a cheaply made, static story of what happens when young girls leave behind the manners they've been brought up with and head out to be jazz babies. Sally O'Neil is shown in the first reel as a seriously troubled party girl, boozing too much, flirting too much, stripping off her clothes too much. Oh, if it were only as exciting as it sounds. A fairly decent party sequence where she ends up being arrested for public indecency turns to a scene with her father's estate planner who informs her that due to her behavior, she has been cut out of her daddy's will. She runs off, is followed by her family's private investigator (Paul Page), and ends up involved with a jewel thief known as "The Moth" (Rae Daggett, accompanied by Duncan Renaldo). As Mardis Gras breaks into celebration, dumb detective Fred Kelsey gets on her trail as well, and it is up to Page to prove her innocent and get her back on the right track.O'Neil is just satisfactory as the bad girl/heroine who is a few years past the age of rebellion but still has a jazz baby quality about her which makes her acceptable as a young party girl. The highlight of the film is her feisty attitude at the party and an encounter with a prim and proper old busy body (Georgia O'Dell) on the train who keeps trying to give her morality lessons to no avail, all the while thinking that she (not O'Neil) is being ogled by Page. More effort could have gone into showing the audience what goes on at a Mardi Gras celebration (minus the request for beads), and ultimately, this ends up being more a lesson in teaching young adults proper behavior. I'd be surprised if the price of a ticket didn't come with free coupons for a cold shower. A poor print is also detrimental to keeping the modern audience's interest. The ending only insinuates with the arrival of O'Neil's aunt and solicitor in New Orleans that if she becomes respectable, she may just get her estate back.

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!!

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.