Movie review – “Sex Madness” (1938)* / ***

Everyone’s thinking about sex. A couple of girls start talking about a burlesque show, get excited by the thought of strippers and go see it. (One of the girls is a predatory lesbian who feels up the other one during a show). One of dancers says bed “isn’t for relaxing - that’s for action”. Then the story kicks in: one of the burlesque dancers has syphilis. She was an innocent who moved to the big smoke to find fame and soon wound up with the clap. She can’t get married til she’s cured (“we’re dealing with a ruthless foe”) – but then it turns out the doctor who cured her is a quack, and she ends up killing her baby and husband with the disease. There’s also a plot about the son of the anti-syphilis campaigner who (irony!) winds up with syphilis, also from a burlesque dancer. Most of the fun from this is had in the early scenes which are quite sexually explicit and you wish there was more of them. There’s hand held camera work of backstage at the burlesque but a tour of syphilis victims at hospital. Lots of pious platitudes and knuckle-gnashing and not very good acting.