Sex Madness (1938)

Every generation has their fair share of scares. Older folks get into a panic about what the younger folks are doing. The younger folks grow up and have that same panic about the even younger folks, only about a different scare. The teenagers of the 1950s partied it up to rock-and-roll while their parents thought it was the devil’s music. The 1980s had parents up in arms about Dungeons & Dragons and how it was turning children to Satanism. There were the violent video games and metal music of the 1990s and how people thought they caused kids to behave violently. Even now, older Republicans are scared of the breaking of gender norms. There’s always something that younger people have going on that older generations fear.

Movies are no exception to the panic of older generations. It’s typically older white men who decide what movies get made. That means that their beliefs and priorities sometimes make their way into movies. A sort of scare tactics propaganda, if you will. The Satanic Panic of the Dungeons & Dragons era made it into the movies of the 1980s. Mazes and Monsters, anyone? Pro-America Cold War propaganda filled movies of the latter half of the 20^th century, popping up in movies like The Manchurian Candidate and Red Dawn. Whatever the old white men fear because it’s popular with the rambunctious teens is what the old white men will put into their movies.

Sunday “Bad” Movies has included its fair share of propaganda movies. I’ve been slowly working my way through the propaganda-style movies of the 1930s and 1940s. You know the ones. You’ve seen me write posts about them before. Each one, so far, has been about a different taboo of that time. They’ve been about different topics that the older generation feared, from drugs to sex to gambling. I want to go over the movies and how they were fear-fueled propaganda.

Reefer Madness

The first of the 1930s propaganda movies I watched for Sunday “Bad” Movies was probably the most famous. Reefer Madness, also known as Tell Your Children, was an over-the-top look at the effects that marijuana could have on the younger generation. It was directed at parents to fuel the fear fire that they would have about a potentially life-threatening substance going into their children’s lungs. Reefer Madness was anti-drug propaganda and exploitation at it’s finest.

The writers of Reefer Madness really wanted to nail how bad the effects of marijuana, also called marihuana in the opening text, were. Everything was heightened to an unrealistic degree. One guy ran off into a closet to smoke a joint and giggle maniacally to himself in what was the most ridiculous scene of the movie. The writers went even further than that, however, when they extrapolated that smoking marijuana would lead people to become murderers. The drug would alter their brain in a way that they would become violent. This played out in the climax of the movie when a murder occurred.

We know now that marijuana doesn’t work like that. It’s not some sort of rage drug that will make people attack one another. The laughing might happen. More likely in a group, or in front of a television, than hiding away in a dark closet. I’ve been in my fair share of hot boxes (not smoking myself, but being around a lot of people who were) while everyone laughed at Live PD on the TV. Nobody fought. Nobody died. Yes, this is anecdotal to what I’ve seen first-hand. But it seems like marijuana isn’t the killer that Reefer Madness made it out to be.

As with most of these propaganda films, Reefer Madness was focused on young characters while the story was directed at adults. The alternate title was Tell Your Children, as the people behind the movie implored the viewers to tell their children about the dangers of marijuana. It was a cautionary tale meant to invoke fear about a drug that could negatively affect people’s mental state. Even if that fear was unfounded, that was the point of the movie.

The Cocaine Fiends

The fear of the next movie was a little more reasonable. Cocaine is a harder drug after all. It’s not seen as the same sort of casual recreation as marijuana is now. Cocaine is still seen as a little more dangerous. Maybe part of that has to do with the glorification of cartels and the cocaine business. All those people with Scarface posters and all that. That has nothing to do with this movie, though. The Cocaine Fiends was a worst-case scenario of what could happen if someone got hooked on nose candy.

The Cocaine Fiends was also known as The Pace that Kills, which was an accurate name for what was shown. The addiction that characters had to cocaine led to deaths of relationships and deaths of other characters. The death of relationships was shown through the main character, a small-town girl who was lured to the big city with thoughts of fame and fortune, only to end up hooked on cocaine. She never contacted her family or friends from back home, essentially cutting off those relationships. Her brother would travel to the big city, and also end up with a cocaine problem, which would ruin the romance he found.

This might sound tame when compared to the outrageous murder and over-the-top laughter of Reefer Madness. Don’t be fooled. There were still some ridiculous dramatic beats in The Cocaine Fiends. The brother’s romantic relationship blowing up was the most memorable moment. He was under the influence of cocaine when he broke up with his pregnant girlfriend. She was also on the drug. In her heartbreak, she decided to close her apartment door, close the windows, turn on the oven gas, and kill herself. Cocaine had caused a pregnant woman to take her life, presented on screen in The Cocaine Fiends for all the viewers to see. “This could happen to you!” the filmmakers wanted people to know.

The Cocaine Fiends wasn’t quite as memorable as Reefer Madness. It was a movie about the turmoil of addiction more than the crazy things that a drug could influence you to do. That was a slightly more believable approach to the material, which may have grounded things a little. It was still a fear-driven movie. The people behind it were still presenting it as a cautionary tale to parents, who would fear that their children might end up hooked on cocaine. It exploited that fear to make money off the cocaine-scare. And the movies weren’t stopping there.

Gambling with Souls

So far, the 1930s panic movies have been about drug addiction and what people will do when under the influence of those drugs. Gambling with Souls changed that formula up by substituting the drugs for gambling. It was a different kind of addiction that could ruin lives. People needed to know about it. They needed to fear it. They needed to make sure that their children didn’t become victims to it. Like any of the other exploitative panic-driven movies of the era, it took great leaps in logic to make its point.

Gambling with Souls began with a fairly simple and accurate portrayal of gambling. It showed that no matter how well a person might think they were doing, the house would always win. A person could go up by a large amount of money. Eventually, however, they would begin losing. And soon after that, the house would have their money. It’s a basic concept when it comes to gambling or casinos. It wouldn’t be a business if people only won money. The only way for the business to make money is for people to lose. The odds of winning have to be less than the odds of losing for business profit. Hence, the house will always win. Or try to win. Close enough.

The main character got into gambling while they were on a hot streak. They got hooked. The more they won, the more they wanted to win. The more they lost, the more they wanted to win the money back. They ended up losing all their money and the people behind the casino took full advantage of it. In what seemed like a little bit of a stretch, the guy who first brought the main character into the gambling world forced her into prostitution to pay off her debts. The problem was that she would never pay those debts off. She had been brought into gambling for the soul purpose of being forced into prostitution, which would then net more money for the people working the casino. They were making more money through sex trafficking than gambling, so the gambling was just a gateway.

Much like the two movies featured in Sunday “Bad” Movies before it, Gambling with Souls would end in tragedy. Or triumph. Perhaps more of a triumph in this case. Someone lost their life, but it sort of freed the main character. She murdered the man who forced her into prostitution, the same man who brought her into gambling. I can’t remember if she was arrested for the murder, but she was free of the forced sex work she had been involved in.

Sex Madness

Finally, we get to this week’s movie. It’s another panic-driven movie designed to be an exploitative cautionary tale. Sex Madness was the older generation shaming younger people for having too much sex, through shouting about syphilis. It was a disease ravaging through the younger generation and, much like the other panic-driven movies, it led to some dramatic revelations.

There were two stories being told in Sex Madness. In the background was the story of Dr. Paul Lorenz (Charles Olcott) warning people of the rise in cases of syphilis. The main story was that of Millicent Hamilton (Vivian McGill), a small-town girl who moved to the big city to pursue her dreams of being a star. She ended up on a casting couch, where she was contracted with the same syphilis that Dr. Paul Lorenz was trying to warn people about. She saw a doctor, who told her there was a treatment, but warned her that there were a lot of doctors who would take advantage of her. Millicent decided to go home, get married, and hope that a doctor there could help put her life back in order.

Sex Madness did some ridiculous things right from the start. The first thing it did was shame sexual freedom. Sure, this was a time when the censors were all over filmmakers. Nobody was allowed to do anything, really, in their movies. Unless there was an educational bent to them. That’s why these panic-driven movies were allowed to show anything. This movie showed the lead up to a group sex party, then told the audience that was how syphilis spread. Maybe it was, but it felt like the filmmakers were saying that it was because of the group sex and not because of someone having syphilis and not telling other people. Sexual freedom was being shamed.

Then there was the Millicent part of the story. When she went to see a doctor in the big city, she was informed that she had syphilis. She was taken to see a patient at the hospital who suffered from the same disease, who hadn’t gotten proper treatment in time. It was one of the most vivid images of the movie. The patient had scars and the camera went over most of them. It was showing the disease in a way I didn’t expect from one of these movies. Then the conversation turned, and the doctor mentioned that most doctors weren’t going to give proper treatment for the disease. Why? I don’t know. Probably to scare people into not getting the disease in the first place. And yeah, they shouldn’t get the disease. There should still be proper treatment if they do, though.

Anyway, Millicent went home and found a new doctor who could give her the right treatment. After a year, she was told that she could marry and have a family. She could do all that fun stuff, so she did. Only, it was a huge mistake. Her child was ill, and they found out the baby contracted syphilis. Her husband lost his eyesight and eventually died. He had contracted syphilis. Millicent felt guilty. When she went to find out why the treatment hadn’t worked, she discovered that her new doctor had been arrested for medical malpractice. She had been duped, and she lost her family because of it.

The point of Sex Madness was to scare people when it came to sex and the diseases that could come with it. Specifically, syphilis was used to scare younger people out of the sexual freedom they desired. The physical effects of syphilis were shown through scarring on a patient’s body. The emotional effects were shown through Millicent losing her family to the disease. There was also an added fear of doctors that was thrown into the mix because people needed a reason to distrust medicine. The entire movie was scare tactics, most of them originating in a group sex party that kicked things off. Was it a panic-driven movie about syphilis, or was the panic about promiscuity? I’ll let you be the judge.

Panic-driven movies have been made about almost any risqué subject. Over the course of Sunday “Bad” Movies, I’ve seen them cover murderous marijuana use, cocaine addiction, gambling debt and sexual exploitation, and promiscuity leading to disease. I know that’s only scratching the surface. The box set that I’ve been watching these from has more movies about subjects like artificial insemination, teenage delinquency, and, I think, serial murder. Plus, there are more movies about prostitution and marijuana.

This style of film wasn’t only present in the 1930s. Scare tactics and panic-driven message movies have stuck around. Movies about the horrors of Dungeons & Dragons were around in the Satanic Panic era of the 1980s. Mazes and Monsters touched on the subject in that decade. Riverdale and Stranger Things touched upon Satanic Panic more recently, too. Then there are the Christian prosecution movies that have all been about Christians being attacked by Atheists who were forcing people to not have religion. The God’s Not Dead franchise was all about that sort of storytelling.

People are scared of what they don’t understand. They’re afraid of being attacked by people who aren’t necessarily attacking them. The movies those people make reflect that kind of thinking. Taboo topics become the crux of panic-driven movies. Scare tactics are used by people who feel they are the victims to try and find some ground to hold onto to fight back. Fear is a major emotion within people and filmmakers know how to use it to their advantage.

I’m taking advantage of this spot to toss in some notes:

• During this post, I mentioned Reefer Madness (week 339), The Cocaine Fiends (week 424), Gambling with Souls (week 469), God’s Not Dead (week 230), God’s Not Dead 2 (week 230), God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness (week 319), and God’s Not Dead: We the People (week 477).
• Have you seen Sex Madness? The movie, I mean. Let me know your thoughts on Twitter or in the comments section.
• If there’s a movie you think I should check out for Sunday “Bad” Movies, leave the title in the comments. Or you can get a hold of me on Twitter. I like suggestions and will consider most of them.
• Make sure to check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram as well.
• Next week, I’m hoping to get the post up on time. This one was a bit late. I know. I’ve already seen the movie for next week and hope to write the post over the next two days. I returned to a franchise I started a while back. I’ve checked out Sniper: Reloaded, the fourth movie in the Sniper series. I hope you’ll join me when that post goes up. See you then!