No Greater Sin

No greater Sin is a film about the scourge of Syphilis. Although a regular run of the mill hygiene film, it was marketed as a exploitation film. No Greater Sin has all the trademarks of a regular hygiene film, the do's and dont's with lots of melodrama added in. The film takes place somewhere in a small community in the USA, nearby there is a army base. The films warns it's viewers about the dangers of diseased soldiers. Although made in 1941, a year when sex hygiene films were getting greater approval from the MPPDA, this one was not granted a seal. Too watch it now, one wonders why??

"No Greater Sin" is a fictionalized film about a campaign in an unnamed city to halt the spread of syphilis. There are two parallel stories in the film--the work of the health commissioner to educate and alert the public as well as one specific case where a man is diagnosed--only to be treated by a quack and to suffer the dreaded consequences.

This is a very low budget exploitation film all about the scourge of syphilis. Because the budget was so low, much of the acting is pretty poor--though somehow the folks making this film were able to get Leon Ames in the lead. Ames would become a familiar face in films in the years following "No Greater Sin", though here he is still a struggling actor. Obviously if he had been a premier actor at that time, he never would have done a VD film like this.

Unfortunately, while the production values are only fair, the information in the film is occasionally suspect as well. While it purports of dispense information about the disease, the movie gets some of its facts wrong as well as dances around the subject--possibly because most audiences of the day would have been unwilling to see an accurate and blunt discussion of sexually transmitted diseases. For example, at one point the doctor (Ames) tells people that you can catch syphilis from a drinking glass--and they never really say it comes from sex! And, although the film says that it is important that syphilis is dealt with openly and honestly, they often avoid any meaningful discussion of the problem. On the plus side, however, they do use the dreaded p-word ('prostitute')--a bit of a surprise--though how prostitutes are related to syphilis is anyone's guess if they are relying on the film to explain this! Heaven help someone if this film is their only form of sex education!! By the way, although this isn't a very good film, it's not bad enough or shrill enough to make it funny or a cult movie. While there are a lot of unintentionally funny exploitation films, this isn't one of them.

As another person has commented, "No Greater Sin" was not in the usual "exploitation" vein and, was made with the intention of being shown in churches and to PTA groups, but was sold to theatres as an exploitation film. It is not written nor played as the typical pot-boiling exploitation film, or not, at least, by those who can look at it relative to the period of American history in which it was made, and not as some kind of antique camp. Leon Ames, Claudia Drake and Adele Pearce are especially good, as is the always good and always-over-looked Luana Walters. Players such as oily, thin and dangerous Ralf Harolde; and oily, fat and really dangerous Frank Jacquet; and oily, fat and chamber-of-commerce dumb Henry Roquemore play the characters they mostly always played and, as usual, played them well. A little bit of sincere Bud McTaggart (billed here as George McTaggart), as the man who gets a dose, thinks he is cured, gets married and finds out he isn't, gets tiresome real quick like---like about his third line in his first scene, and he has many lines in many scenes.

And the film has a great sight gag when drunk Arthur Housman stumbles out of the rest room and flashes his "press" credential at the policeman. It takes one creative drunk to make a credential out of the handle off of a toilet bowl. It most likely had been done before but I missed it if so.