DAMAGED LIVES (1933) / DAMAGED GOODS (1937)

These two "sex hygiene" films warning against venereal disease have been issued on one disc by Kino Lorber, both in very good restored prints. Both are based on a 1901 play by Eugene Brieux which was later novelized by Upton Sinclair, but only the 1937 film officially credits the original source. The plots of the two movies are very similar, but the 1933 version, Damaged Lives, is far more interesting dramatically and as a film. Donald (Lyman Williams) is the son of a shipping magnate; he is impatient and hard-nosed but is learning the ropes of being a good boss with help from his father. His fiancée Joan (Diane Sinclair) is getting impatient to marry because she really, really wants a baby—which may be code for "really wants sex." Don Sr. encourages Don Jr. to break a date with Joan for a night on the town with a big shot client. When the drunken client winds up leaving with a hooker, Don takes Elise, the client's companion (Charlotte Merriam, pictured at left with Williams), back home where they have a one-night stand. Later, when his conscience is bothering him, he confesses the affair to Joan who, after a moment of umbrage, insists that the two get married right away by a justice of the peace. Soon, Elise summons Don to her room to tell him she has syphilis, then shoots herself. Worried, Don goes to a doctor who turns out to be a fly-by-night quack who tells Don he's fine then charges him a hundred bucks. But Don isn't fine, as he discovers when Joan gets pregnant and is diagnosed with syphilis, with a good chance that it will be passed on to the child. After the doc puts the fear of God into the couple by showing them pathetic cases of people crippled physically and mentally by the disease, he then tells them not to worry, that a 2-year course of medicine will wipe it out. But Joan isn't so sure, and she decides to turn on the gas and kill herself and her sleeping husband. At the last minute, Don struggles to awaken, but can he save Joan? This was directed by cult figure Edgar G. Ulmer, the year before he made his reputation with THE BLACK CAT. On its surface, it seems like an average early 30s melodrama, with the added attraction of some blatant educational footage showing the horrors of unattended venereal disease, but compared to the 1937 version, it's a minor masterpiece. Williams and Sinclair, in a B-movie way, actually make you care about their characters, and the final sequence as Joan prepares to turn on the gas is beautifully shot. Jason Robards Sr. plays the doctor and Charlotte Merriam is the tragic Elise. 

Damaged Goods, the 1937 film (also released as Forbidden Desire and Marriage Forbidden) which credits Upton Sinclair's novel as its source, is less artful and more to-the-point. It begins by connecting the story we are about to see with FDR's campaign of venereal disease education. As his friends jokingly play a funeral march at George's bachelor party, a group of young women arrive. George (Douglas Walton) chats with Margie (Phyllis Barry, both pictured at right). The two wind up having sex—symbolized by a broken champagne glass. Within six minutes of screen time, George discovers he has syphilis. Doctor Walker tells him that he can be cured but the treatment could take up to four years and advises him to delay the wedding. George tells his fiancée Henrietta (Arletta Duncan) that he has to postpone the wedding due to a lung condition. She and her congressman father find that a bit fishy, so George finds another doctor who claims he can cure him in a matter of months. George and Henrietta marry, have a child, and discover the infection is, of course, still active, though George keeps the news from his wife. There is an added subplot involving the baby seeming unhealthy and being taken to the country to stay with George's mother for a time. The wet nurse soon finds out what the baby's problem is and that she could in theory contract the disease from nursing the baby, and blackmail is in store. Ultimately this feels like a long propaganda movie, both warning people from having sex outside of marriage and trying to de-stigmatize the disease as a moral issue. The happy ending is that Henrietta's father decides to promote venereal disease education on a national level. The director, Phil Goldstone, filmed this in very workmanlike fashion and it has none of the style of the Ulmer movie. The acting is adequate, with the best performances coming from Greta Meyer as the wet nurse and Esther Dale as George's mother. The Kino Lorber disc includes educational shorts of the kind that might have accompanied screenings of these films (often for adult, sex-segregated audiences), where the films weren't banned by state censor boards. Both films have commentaries; I've only heard the one for the 1933 film and it’s mostly good although occasionally lapses into simplistic narration of the movie. [Blu-Ray]