Madness?

SEX MADNESS-1938-This venereal disease melodrama starts off with two old fogies complaining about young people. Then two secretaries talk about being strippers. They decide to go to a show where pasty faced theater goers (including a lesbian couple) oogle dancing girls. Later at a party everyone goes upstairs to have sex (not shown). A dancer named Millicent (Vivian McGill) is seeing a doctor who's treating her for syphilis and she relates how it all happened. He shows her patients permanently damaged by "the disease". Then two doctors talk about sex and social diseases. Millicent later returns home (after hanging in NYC getting her treatments) a cured woman and marries her boyfriend, Wendel (Mark Daniels). They even have a baby. Unfortunately the local doctor who was treating her turns out to be a lying quack who is arrested. This means Millicent wasn't actually cured and has passed the clap on to her husband and baby. An old doctor gives them a cautionary speech and when it seems suicide is the only way out they both come to their senses, take a new cure and live happily ever after. The End.

his badly directed and acted exploitation tale was made by Dwain Esper, the man responsible for the notorious and better known MANIAC (1934).

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A Problem “Down There”...

THE INNOCENT PARTY-1959-Don and his friend go to the city to see a movie and pick two easy girls. He has sex with one of them and the next night he convinces his steady girl Betty to have sex with him in his car. Things really change between them especially when Don finds out he has contracted syphilis from his encounter with “the city girl”. Even though a doctor shows him slides of chancre sores (“Boy, pretty awful looking”) and such Don doesn't want to reveal that Betty might be infected (and ruin her reputation).

 Produced by the Kansas State Board of Health, it was directed by Herk Harvey who made dozens of short documentaries and industrial film before and after his only feature film in 1962: CARNIVAL OF SOULS... 

The washed out color print I saw was tacked on to Alpha Video DVD version of DAMAGED LIVES.  

They Got The Clap!

DAMAGED LIVES-1933-The great Edgar Ulmer made this cautionary exploitation drama a year before his horror masterpiece THE BLACK CAT. 

Donald Bradley, a young businessman (Lyman Williams) gets a venereal disease from a one night stand with a woman he meets at a party. He gets married to his fiancee, Joan (Diane Sinclair) and passes it on to her. 

He visits the famous doctor Leonard (Murray Kinnell) who gives him a tour of patients who have long term disabilities from the effects of untreated VD. Madness, blindness, body sores are some of the results. Their family doctor (Jason Robards Sr.) tries to cheer them up but then he won't even let his young son kiss Joan. After she tries to commit suicide and take hubby with her they realize everything will be ok (the medical treat to cure them will take two years) and they live happily ever after. It's based on a French play. 

You can read more about the author of the play here:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Brieux

Thanks for reading!