Well hardly anyone has really reviewed this. It's a campy exploitation film like Reefer Madness except about Syphilis. Unlike today where it's easily treated though the movie goes out of the way to scourge and scorn the hapless victims. The acting isn't bad but the over the top presentation of the material makes it almost laughable. As if they were lepers the victims are nearly immediately outcast by society. It probably was over the top for its era much like those anti smoking and vaping ads they air today. It's moderately better than Damaged Lives which follows similar precedent (and you can ignore all the smoking and drinking in that one because that's fine in 1933, but Syphilis not so much). I am not sure what one gains by watching this, it's an interesting period piece if you're a fan of stuff like this. I found it more comedic than dramatic. In reality that's what it is, essentially an hour long public service ad. If you substitute opioids, vaping, steroids, alcohol, gambling etc and you essentially would have modern topics you could expound the ads of to achieve this result.
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YRLY59E21 February 2022
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mark.waltz21 January 2024This exploitation film on the subject of syphilis starts off quite subtly, with understated acting and dialog that infrequently gets over-the-top and silly. Groom to be Douglas Walton finds out from his doctor Pedro de Cordova that he is infected and tries to delay his marriage to understanding Arletta Duncan with a lie about what his condition is, infuriating her politician father (Ferdinand Munier) who views it as bad publicity for his position.
Walton goes to see another doctor (Clarence Wilson) who gives him a shorter time period for being cured, resulting in his baby being born sick. Professionally done and much more realistically (for the time) presented with little finger wagging, the only unintentional laugh I found was the initial shot of the rotund Munier stuffed into a tuxedo. Phyllis Barry as the party girl he gets the disease from only has a few scenes but her key scene towards the end does treat her sympathetically.
Esther Dale as Walton's mother is much more subtle than Munier, certainly not like many of the browbeating wives and mothers she played in other films. Greta Meyer as the baby's nurse turns on the family in the one overwrought moment that gives it more exploitive elements, but overall, this is the least melodramatic of that genre. I rarely give a high rating to films like this, but "Damaged Lives" deserves it. Fortunately in the 80+ years since this came out, medical research has changed the stigma of the disease, so this is best viewed as a period piece. -
Wizard-814 September 2012This movie must be really obscure if nobody has commented on it since the IMDb was first put online! Anyway, on to the movie itself. It concerns the danger of syphilis, which must have seemed like hot stuff for audiences in the 1930s, but the movie is extremely tame today. The only risqué material is a microscopic look at the syphilis bacteria, as well as the mention of the words "syphilis" and "prostitute". The movie definitely has some camp appeal in today's eyes, which may not have you laughing out loud but will have you giggling on a fairly regular basis. But while the movie has camp, it is surprisingly better made than most other "naughty" independent films of the production code era. It is swiftly paced (before the 10 minute mark, the hero has been infected with syphilis!), the direction shows some professionalism (though the editing is crude at times), and there is better acting than you usually get with films of this nature. Also interesting is that if the claims of the movie are to be believed, there was a lot more pre-marital sex going on in the United States in this era than you may have been lead to believe. The movie does end kind of weakly (it is never revealed how the wife of the central character is able to forgive her husband), but before then it is a pretty entertaining artifact, entertaining on more than one level.