AllMovie

Like the previous years' Ten Nights in a Bar-room, The Face on the Barroom Floor resurrects a corny old title to illustrate the dangers of alcohol abuse. Bramwell Fletcher stars as Bill Bronson, a down-and-out drunkard who is the object of everyone's derision. It was not always thus: once he was a successful banker, with a beautiful wife (Dulcie Cooper) and a rosy future. But when Bronson tries to wean his father-in-law from the influence of an evil bootlegger, and when his own wife insists that he must drink occasionally to "be sociable," our hero succumbs to the family curse of alcoholism. One sip of booze leads to another, and before long Bronson has literally drunk away his entire life. Though it leans towards caricature and overexaggeration at times, Face on the Barroom Floor is in many ways as powerful as such later anti-liquor epics as The Lost Weekend and Come Fill the Cup.