One wonders what Kenneth Anger thought of this cheapjack bastardization of his famous tome, if indeed he's even aware that it exists. HOLLYWOOD BABYLON follows the path of Anger's book almost to the letter, with each "chapter" taking the form of a staged vignette, and tied together by tinted newsreel footage and old silent film clips.

The first scandal on our tour of Sin City is that of Olive Thomas, popular silent star who, in 1920, swallowed a fatal dose of mercury granules in her Paris hotel room. The reason for her suicide: inability to score heroin for her addict husband, Jack Pickford, brother of Mary! In the staged footage, we get to see one of Pickford's debauched parties, where guests smoke opium and get their gear off for an orgy.

Things get even more exciting with stories about movie star addict Wallace Reid followed by Valentino voyeuristically watching lesbians writhing on his bed, Uschi Digart playing none a butch Marlene Dietrich (discovered in a German music hall doing a lesbo act with Maria Arnold), and the infamous Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle scandal..
The most outrageous reenactment depicts the love triangle between William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies, and Charlie Chaplin. No names are mentioned, and all the events are only "alleged" to have happened, but we see Hearst killing producer Thomas Ince aboard his ship, then manipulating the newspapers so they all report Ince's death as acute indigestion!
Other sights include: Charlie Chaplin trying to convince his wife (Suzanne Fields) of the joys of fellatio; Clara Bow taking on the members of a football team; Eric Von Stroheim filming one of his "orgiastic classics" and enjoying a gal getting whipped at his home; and Sandi Carey as one of Miss Digart's many lesbian lovers, known as "the Gillette Blades for their double-edged diversions."