Tim Kirk’s spoof of movie-themed podcasts features Patton Oswalt, who is heard but not seen as Jimmy Morris, aka The Film Dick, who here offers his online viewers a special treat: a screening of the actual 1938 cult classic Sex Madness—a cousin to Reefer Madness, about the dangers of syphilis rather than weed—complete with a running commentary by himself and his guest Chester Holloway (Rob Zabrecky), grandson of the film’s writer-director. As the screening proceeds, Morris’s observations about the picture’s manifest ineptitude are gradually overwhelmed by Holloway’s revelations about his grandfather’s real motive: to blackmail the powerful members of a secret sex cult into doing his bidding. According to Holloway, this cult was involved not only in unseemly sexual activities, but also in gruesome scientific experiments, the effects of which persist to the present day. Sex Madness Revealed is a one-joke concept that depends on the joke building inexorably to an explosive conclusion, but while there are scattered laughs here and there, the effort fails overall, not only because Holloway’s observations become absurdly farfetched but also because the culminating revelation—clearly intended to be horrifying as well as darkly funny—is fumbled. Optional. (F. Swietek)
Sex Madness Revealed
Kino Lorber, 66 min., not rated, DVD: $19.95, Blu-ray: $29.95 Volume 34, Issue 5
Sex Madness Revealed
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