Free Glide

In one of the classic films of Las Vegas nightlife, Indecent Proposal chronicles the wild nightlife of the Vegas scene. In this movie, a husband and wife run into heavy losses at the online poker table. They have very little money to start with, so the loss is extremely damaging to the honeymooning couple. However, they still have their love for each other, or so we are led to believe. Their descent into debt is typical of films of the 1990s that tried to represent Las Vegas as a den of inequity. This perception has mostly changed with as the Texas Holdem poker craze sweeps the nation, but looking at films like this provide a snapshot of how gambling was viewed during a specific time period.

In this film, a wealthy patron offers to help the young couple repay their gambling and online poker debts by paying to spend one night with the wife. This proposal represents the benchmark for sordid adventure of the film. How the young couple handles the proposal shows that Las Vegas was considered to be one of the places in the world where one misstep could only lead to more trouble. The proposal shows how gambling debts can lead to further, and far more catastrophic, mistakes.