Sex Madness

Sure there are camp moments in Sex Madness, a film which somehow tries to gain the notoriety that 'Reefer Madness' has but fails despite having tons of elements that should point in it's favor.

In the beginning it starts off strongly, with all sorts of people going to a burlesque show (and jamming the auditorium up!). This show is probably the highlight of the movie, plenty of silly dancing, no nudity, and clunky choreography. I liked the personalities that showed up for this. A group of randy boys looking to party, a lesbian couple who can't stop pawing each other, and a man who gets all worked up he rapes the first girl he sees. Funny, but ALL of these plot lines get dropped for Millicent (!!), a dancer in the chorus, who finds out she has VD from her doctor. After taking a tour which she's all chipper about seeing icky cases of VD, she goes into treatment, carefully hiding it away from her fiancée. After going home and seeing another doctor who gives her a quack cure, she marries and.. well… you can guess the rest. Rest assured that as foul as it sounds, it drags somewhat, and is nowhere as memorable as 'Reefer', (admittedly, I thought It was going to be of the same looniness). It's okay for some laughs, but doesn't hold up.

Sex Madness (1938)

BOMB (out of 4)

A sweet, young woman decides she wants to be a star so she tells her fiancé that their love needs to be put on hold while she goes to New York City to make it big. She doesn't make it big but she does have sex with someone and sure enough she catches syphilis.

SEX MADNESS comes from director Dwain Esper, the man best remembered for MANIAC as well as other exploitation films. It's hard to believe but at one time films like this one, REEFER MADNESS and THE COCAINE FIENDS were controversial pieces of filmmaking that passed themselves off as education pictures while mainly just wanted to draw attention to a naughty subject and make money off of a public willing to pay it.

Most of these films are incredibly awful without a single thing to really recommend in them. THere are countless awful things about this picture including some really awful performances, a really stupid story and of course everything technical is bad. THe editing, the direction, the cinematography and even the bad stock footage that is used at times. Oh yeah, don't forget the horrid dialogue that happens. As with other VD films, this one here features "real footage" as shock value.

I'm not going to lie, as awful as this movie is, it's still fairly entertaining simply because of how awful it is. All the false information given, the way everything is hyped up for drama and the ridiculous message are all Bad Movie Cinema 101. On that level, SEX MADNESS is worth watching.

It's an old scratchy movie about the danger of syphilis. It seems proud of itself for dealing with the disease, although the treatment, so to speak, was better done in Warner's "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet." It's preceded by one of those announcements trumpeting the seriousness of the subject. You've probably seen them before. If it's not syphilis, it's some other lethal threat. It's the mad empire of Japan, the jack-booted threat of Naziism, the crepuscular shenanigans of "organized crime," the lure of dope, the tentacular charm of Margaret Groin, the girl who refused my invitation to the senior prom because I insisted on wearing Bermuda shorts.

The acting is terrible. Let's get that out of the way first. There has been better acting in a high school production of "Our Town" in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. Story-wise, it seems that the new District Attorney or somebody is raiding girlie shows. His last drag netted eleven girls who were seen removing their hampering garments on the public stage.

I found myself wondering about the agents of social control who were assigned the loathsome task of watching the shows until the crime was committed. I kept thinking of Anthony Comstock, the postal inspector of the 1800s and sworn foe of Margaret Sanger, who couldn't tear himself away from the perusal of salacious material. He even blocked some medical texts from reaching medical schools. A lifetime devoted to reading dirty stuff so he could condemn it, a job to kill for.

This movie runs along similar lines, rather like Cecile B. DeMille's showing us Claudette Colbert taking a nude bath in ass's milk. Terrible stuff. We see a burlesque show with two dozen girls dressed in bathing suits too modest for today's tastes. In the audience, a mustachioed young man is trying to talk his girl friend into spending the night with him. "You can tell your mother you're staying with friends." Nearby a sinister and horny lesbian (in dark clothes) is seducing an innocent young virgin (in white clothes). There are cuts to the maniacal grins of drooling males in the audience. Afterwards, the boys take some of the girls to a house party, where everyone flirts and boozes it up.

Around this point it occurred to me that some viewers might be thinking, "What's WRONG with these people?" It occurred to me that maybe there was nothing at all "wrong" with them, that they were just doing what the situation demanded, that the problem (if there was one) was systemic. As individuals we tend to imitate the behavior of those around us. That's called "culture" and it's why we're doing this in English instead of Urdu, and it's why none of us will wear a toga to work tomorrow. It's why there is no such thing as "The Society For the Advancement of Ugly People." There are of course subcultures into which we may find ourselves swept up because of constitutional quirks as much as culture. There IS a Flat Earth Society and there are presidential elections.

You want a movie about syphilis? Watch "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet." You want a movie with lots of sex? Just go to a movie.

At first it was good, but then it got boring. I really loved the burlesque show. It was so great. I wish there were still shows like this now. Men getting turned on by girls in big feathered hats and sequin leotards jumping around with big grins on their faces seem a little less threatening than those who want genitals of women they've never met before shoved in their faces. Sorry to be so graphic, but the movie makes you realize how drastically sex shows have changed.

That is really the main part of the movie that caught my attention. The film does have valid points about how you shouldn't have a kid if you have syphilis. And you shouldn't have sex if you have it either. However, the whole idea of someone with this disease being forbid by their doctor to get married seemed a little strange to me. Plus the main woman was in cloud nine the whole as if the whole world was either completely wonderful or completely horrible.

I also thought the point about the "quacks" was interesting because it's harder today to figure out if a doctor is a quack since we have such a high rate of suing for malpractice. A doctor today might push some unnecessary pills on you so that s/he will get some money from the drug company, but they would never go so far as to guarantee you are cured of syphilis and can now freely have sex with people when you actually weren't cured at all. That's just bogus. I'm glad that doesn't happen anymore.

Watch this movie to see how drastically times have changed but also to educate yourself about this disease. It's the only thing that hasn't changed.

It's a public service film against immoral sexuality and the spread of STD like syphilis. This is really bad. It's modeled after Reefer Madness. The acting is bad. The filmmaking is much worst. It is interesting to see the various sexuality being lumped together as bad behavior. There is a creepy old guy who is obviously a rapist. There are loose showgirls throwing a party. There is a suggestion of lesbianism. There is pre-marital sex. There is the casting couch. It's all equally evil. As for camp possibility, it's too long for that. At some point, it gets boring even as an exercise in ridicule.