Though The Road to Ruin is commonly referred to as a Willis Kent film, directorial duties were credited to Melville Shyer and Mrs. Wallace Reid. Memphis-born Shyer frequently worked for Kent, helming such hot-topic films as Mad Youth (1940), Souls in Pawn (1940) and Confessions of a Vice Baron (1943). More of his career was spent as assistant director on about 150 films, most of them low-budget Westerns.

Direction is co-credited to Mrs. Wallace Reid, whose late husband had been, shoulder-to-shoulder with Douglas Fairbanks, one of Hollywood's most likable adventure heroes. After an injury on the set of The Valley of the Giants (1919), Reid was prescribed (and later became addicted to) morphine. Reid died on January 18, 1923, sending shockwaves through the industry.

One would be tempted to surmise that Mrs. Reid had little to do with the direction of The Road to Ruin other than the publicity value of her late husband's name -- but, if so, one would be mistaken. While Mrs. Reid was in fact a crusader against drug abuse, she was also an accomplished filmmaker with a life-long career in film. Under the name Dorothy Davenport, she had begun as an actress at the Biograph Studios in 1910, where she was a member of director D.W. Griffith's troupe. Marrying Wallace Reid in 1913, Davenport continued to work steadily as an actress for years, until giving birth to Wallace Reid, Jr. in 1917, at which point she left the business to raise her child. Reid's death prompted her return to film, producing the anti-drug film Human Wreckage (1923). Among Davenport's few directorial credits is the remarkably poignant 1929 melodrama Linda, which stars The Road to Ruin's Helen Foster.

In exploitation films, it was common to put the moral lesson in the mouths of an on-screen character, usually a doctor, school teacher, policeman or judge. In The Road to Ruin, the wise figure of authority is the director of the Girl's Detail of the Crime Prevention Division. She is portrayed by Davenport herself, though she is not credited among the cast. Davenport had also served as a moral mouthpiece in the controversial The Red Kimona (1925), which explored the topics of promiscuity, drug addiction, and prostitution.

One can find several veterans of the silent era in The Road to Ruin. The role of Mrs. Monroe, Eve's fast-living mother, is played by silent movie veteran Mae Busch, who is best remembered as Princess Vera Petchnikoff in Erich von Stroheim's Foolish Wives (1922). Ann's mom was another silent cinema veteran: Virginia True Boardman, who devoted more than twenty five years to film acting, appearing mostly in low-budget westerns.

An additional source of income for exploitation distributors was the sale of booklets, generally sex-education pamphlets that promised the unvarnished truth of human reproduction, but delivered dry medical text. At screenings of The Road to Ruin (both the silent and sound versions), moviegoers were given the opportunity to purchase a 32-page booklet on "The Most Talked About Picture in Screen History." It was comprised of a 21-page novelization of the story, photographs, and a ten-page essay on juvenile delinquency. The essay concludes, "Sex attraction, when properly controlled and directed is the most beautiful thing in life; when allowed to degenerate into mere lust and sensuality [it is] the most terrible and most pregnant with danger. How infinitely important that the health and strength and morals of the nation's youth be most zealously safeguarded and preserved!"

It was common practice for exploitation distributors to change the titles of their films and sell them multiple times to the gullible public. In 1936, The Road to Ruin was re-released as Call Me Co-ed.

Following the footsteps of Reefer Madness (1936), The Road to Ruin enjoyed a postmodern resurrection when it was adapted as a stage musical by William Zeffiro in Fall 2008, as part of the New York Music Theater Festival. According to the program notes, "The story begins as narrator, Willis Kent, welcomes the audience to his 'Traveling Tent Show' and introduces the cast who proceed to tell the story of fifteen-year-old 'Little Sally Canfield' -- the nicest girl at Central High." The musical uses the character name Sally because it is inspired more by the 1928 Road to Ruin than the 1934 remake.

by Bret Wood