Reefer Madness/Sex Madness

The Motion Picture Production Code made a lot of things taboo in Hollywood movies during the 1930s and beyond. Drugs? Sex? Forget it. Only the most clever screenwriters, directors and studio producers knew how to get right up to the line of what was morally acceptable for audiences to see, without crossing that boundary. But one way producers of cheesy exploitation films managed to invoke blunt sexuality and drug use in their story content was through faux education works allegedly made for the public welfare. Both the 1936 "Reefer Madness" and 1938 "Sex Madness" are among the most well-known examples of exploitation movies having their cake and eating it, too, selling the sensational and sinful while lofty characters such as doctors and judges warn us of their evils. Both films are sordid tales of young people ruining (and sometimes ending) their own lives or those of others by not resisting youthful temptation."Reefer Madness," rediscovered in the 1970s as a cult classic for bemused stoners, was originally shot by a church group trying to make a point to kids about the dangers of marijuana. But producer Dwain Esper purchased the completed footage and recut it into a more lurid if overly complicated story about a cascade of crimes, including murder, set into motion by a pair of unrepentant pot dealers. Along the way, smoking marijuana induces insanity in its victims along with lowered inhibitions, and is linked with attempted rape and other horros. The wild-eyed looks on the faces of pot smokers in "Reefer Madness" indeed make one chuckle, and the entire enterprise is a naked attempt to titillate viewers while also striking fear in our hearts. The same is true of "Sex Madness," which skirts censorship on matters of sex by raising the specter of venereal disease among sexually active young people. In an early set piece taking place during an unabashedly lascivious, burlesque dance performance, several of the film's characters in the audience seem wound up and ready to indulge their desires for one another, including a lesbian encounter and a kid putting pressure on his girl. Such wickedness and perversion, as the film's older, wiser characters see it, pervades the rest of "Sex Madness," which ultimately focuses on a showgirl who wants to marry a boy from her small hometown, but is afflicted with gonorreah. The consequences of venereal disease finally carry over to an innocent, ending "Sex Madness" on a note difficult to lampoon. Lightly recommended. Aud: J, H, C, P. (T. Keogh)