Esper-loitation
Sex Madness
Forget everything you think you know about 1930s cinema - the Dwain Esper sideshow comes to town.
This Friday, ACMI brings you a double-feature of early exploitation cinema from Dwain Esper with Sex Madness (1938) and Marihuana, the Devil's Weed (1936).
Dwain Esper came to film making late in life. A self funded producer, Esper was a World War I veteran who left the construction business to produce and direct exploitation cinema, driven by his fascination with taboo topics.
There is no topic Esper wouldn't explore in a film - illicit drug use, venereal diseases, corpses and caesarean births were all on show for shock value. He escaped violating the censorship code due in part to his unorthodox distribution methods; he held travelling tent screenings, dubbing himself 'the King of celluloid gypsies'.
Produced in a conservative 1930s America, many of Esper's films preach moralistic warnings against 'scourges of society' such as sexual promiscuity and illegal drug usage.
Flawed characters are typically youth (most often women) with 'higher moral' characters played by older, authoritarian figures who are witness to the 'demise' of the day's youth.
The alarmist opening crawl of Sex Madness reads: "Down through the ages has rushed a menace more dangerous than the worst criminal: Syphilis. Let us seize this monster and stamp out forever its horrible influence.. Humanity must be enlightened! Ignorance must be abolished! Young and old, rich and poor, they must be told!"
In Sex Madness, the girl-next-door (played by Vivian McGill) wins a beauty pageant, moves to New York, gets drunk once, contracts syphilis and ends up in a burlesque show rather than return home in disgrace to her waiting fiancée.
The film features priceless flashback scenes (not always in order of occurrence) to raucous parties as she recounts her situation to her doctor whose words are to instill shame in the young girl.
In Marihuana, the Devil's Weed, a teenage girl is led to wanton and licentious behavior by a little 'giggle weed', graduating from beer hall to beach party before succumbing to pre-marital sex and irredeemable moral and social ruin. When a skinny-dipping session goes wrong, family shame prevents her from going to the police; she turns to a life of drugs to try and solve the problems they created, wreaking terrible effect on her later life.
Esper's filmography is littered with instructional-like titles such as How to Undress in Front of Your Husband (1937) and How to Take a Bath (1937). It is often hard to discern his intentions: To create grotesque entertainment pieces? To document the taboos of the time? To cast judgement or even create educational videos!
His best known work, Reefer Madness (1936) - a cult classic for its sheer shock-value and absurdity - will screen next week Friday 24 July also as part of the special Freaky Fridays Dwayne Esper season.
The quality of Esper's films is debatable (though never a boundary to their success), but perhaps you should decide for yourself how seriously to heed the warnings!
For session information, click here
Published Thursday, 16 July 2009
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