The original Variety review characterized Born to Be Bad as an amalgam of “unnatural mother love, delinquent juvenile behavior and strange adult thinking”; William K. Everson finds it a typical Thirties soap opera--a genre which he notes is “obviously influenced by the radio soap operas of the Thirties...and has to be enjoyed purely on its own superficial level. With a skilled director, production lushness and beautiful people in the leads, the genre can be extremely entertaining and rewarding.... To expect more would be as bad a mistake as to approach the soap opera purely in a spirit of ‘camp.'
“Caught up in the Production Code reforms, Born to Be Bad was heavily laundered and cut, but the editing merely seems to have given the sleaze a tighter cohesion! A handsomely mounted curiosity that is virtually never shown.... There are some quite gutsy elements to the plot, and the climax is quite surprising, but its relation to reality is virtually nil.”