Sex Madness
About Sex Madness
Millicent Hamilton, a dancer, contracts syphilis after a casting-couch encounter in New York. Dr. Hampton tells her to take the long treatment and to refuse a quack cure. She wants to go home and marry Wendel Hope. Around her the film shows a burlesque house, secretaries, and a house party, all offered as warnings. If she skips the treatment, the marriage is the risk.
Cast & crew
More about Sex Madness
Dwain Esper directed and produced this exploitation feature, also called Human Wreckage. Joseph Seiden and Vincent Valentini are credited with the script. Vivian McGill plays Millicent, Rose Tapley her mother, Mark Daniels plays Wendel, and Linda Lee Hill plays the dancer Sheila Wayne. Wikidata gives 57 minutes. Wikipedia lists 52.
Themes
Making
Esper's prints were trimmed state by state. The Ohio card is one of the few scene-by-scene records of what a board pulled.
Preservation
A public-domain copy circulates. Running times on prints differ between about 52 and 57 minutes.
Notes
- New York, Pennsylvania, and Kansas censorship boards refused it a release.
- Ohio passed it only after cuts: a girl stroking another girl's arm and the line "You do have plenty of it," a close-up of a bare navel, and the whole house-party sequence.
- Paul Lorenz, worried about venereal disease, watches his son Tom at a burlesque show. Charles Olcott plays Lorenz.
- Ed Redding plays Dr. Hampton.
- The film was sold on the syphilis warning, in the same roadshow circuit as Esper's other vice pictures.
Scenes
- Dr. Hampton warns Millicent off the miracle cure.
- Ohio's board removes the entire house party.
Also available
- Internet Archive (sex_madness)
