Sex Madness

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.

This is another one of those scare tactic movies from the 30's that's more hokey than fact. I laughed throughout the whole movie watching the antics of "normal" people in the 30's. It's supposed to teach you about the dangers of syphillis, but is more entertaining than informative.

This movie ranks up there with "Reefer Madness" and "Cocaine Fiends"......entertaining and nothing more.

I highly recommend it to anyone that wants a night of belly laughs.

I dipped into my Mill Creek Cult Classics DVD set this weekend because I was bored. Really, I could have found something better to do (honestly, I was too tired to give anything real my attention). These movies should not really be labeled Cult Classics, but rather "Goofy Old Propaganda Films That Are Mostly Terrible and Which You Don't Really Need to See - Knowing That They Existed Is More Than Enough." I suppose that'd be a bit wordy, though. And it really doesn't help that the quality is abysmal. Obviously, nobody cared enough to preserve these films, but I really wonder what Reefer Madness would look like in high definition. Sex Madness is a pure propaganda film which wants to warn its audience about the dangers of syphilis and other "social diseases." You have to wonder if anyone in 1938 actually plunked down a nickel to see films like this. The film basically consists of a doctor telling a skank that she has contracted syphilis, and what that entails. The authority figures of the film declare that people need to be more honest about sex, but what their honesty amounts to is shouting "keep your damn legs shut or you'll get sores! This is what they look like. Aren't they gross?" Its second piece of advice is probably more helpful: people with syphilis or other VDs need to see a real doctor, and not some quack. I'll bet that, in their embarrassment, the syphilitic would often turn to more discreet, illegal doctors (there's probably some implied abortion there, too). The film is, of course, a total bore, and it looks like crud.

Actually, most film portrayals of sex and drug use before the Hayes Commission were not timid, and then afterwards (circa 1930) they had to have some sort of moral equation showing the results of such behavior. This film, post 1930, would have fallen under Hayes guidelines, and consequently meets those guidelines, and yet the depiction of immoral behavior, for the time, and the consequences of such are fairly progressive. The whole idea of sex education for young persons, and of exposing the public to the reality of sexual diseases, is something still being tossed around in today's society. This film is on the progressive side of this debate, albeit dated, and those snide commenters who decry this film as being too prudish or preachy have little idea of what was really prudish and preachy in the 1930s. The grand images of that past time as presented by Hollywood are merely that, images. The reality is much less wonderful, and each new generation feels that it is the generation that is the most sophisticated of all. I have no fear that the young generation of 2070 will have a great laugh at our current ways.

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.