Movies about Venereal disease
Know for Sure PSA (1941)
Running Time: 23 mins Black & White
Starring: Ward Bond, Joseph Crehan, Samuel S. Hinds
Documentary detailing the dangers and treatment of venereal disease. Tony Medroni is excited about the imminent birth of a son, but when the child is born dead, Tony must face the fact that his own sexual history has caused the child’s death. A doctor explains the problem to Tony and discusses other cases with a colleague.
USS VD: Loď hanby (1942)
Running Time: 46 mins Black & White
Unintentionally hilarious film was made by the U.S. government during World War II to show its young servicemen the results of «fooling around» with «loose women» overseas. Actual victims of such sexually transmitted diseases as syphilis and gonorrhea are shown, along with the physical deterioration that accompanies those diseases.
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Movies about Venereal disease
Produkční společnost: Hexagon Productions/Trenchard Productions
Rozpočet: low. According to Trenchard Smith, $33,000 excluding blow up to 35mm. The blow up costs, which really should be part of any budget calculation, would have added a substantial amount to the budget.
Místa: various, including Grant Page in Hong Kong, medieval jousts at Kryal castle Ballarat, and Sydney for VD clinic scenes
Filmed: 1974 — the film is listed as being «in production» in the July 2004 edition of Kino papíry.
Australian distributor: Roadshow
Theatrical release: 3rd January, 1975, State Theatrette Sydney, and the Times Theatrette Bourke Street Melbourne
16 mm to 35mm for theatrical release Eastmancolor
Doba běhu: 83 minut (Oxford Australian Film) (a short television and long feature film version of the film exist at the NSFA — the TV version, which at one time screened in four parts on Youtube, ran c. 69’34»).
DVD running time: 1’24 ″ 51
Pokladna: according to the Film Victoria box office report, the film made a tidy A$367,000, equivalent to $2,150,620 in 2009 A$.
This would almost certainly have placed the film into profit, compared to the very low budget, and Brian Trenchard Smith confirmed this in an interview in the Dec-Jan 1979-1980 edition of Kino papíry:
. It did okay for them (i.e. Hexagon/Roadshow), getting its money back and making a small profit.
Názor
Ocenění
Dostupnost
For a long time the film wasn’t available outside the archive, not even copies derived from VHS and circulated amongst collectors.
A few scenes are featured in Mark Hartley’s celebration of Ozploitation flicks, Ne tak docela Hollywood, and even more strangely, a 6’20» clip with time code can be found as item 7 of extra Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs material on the DVD celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Sunbury rock festival (Thorpe and his adventures with VD feature in the film).
It seemed that the movie that started director Brian «Man from Hong Kong» Trenchard-Smith’s feature film career would never surface on DVD.
A very rough off air version of the shortened television version screened on Australia’s Seven Network has been available in parts on Youtube, but it looked crappy and was television «safe».
So imagine the excitement at Oz Movies when news came that Umbrella was releasing the Hexagon produced, Igor Auzins’ directed High Rolling.
Ne kvůli High Rolling, which Australian cultists had already seen as part of the Hexagon tribute DVD collection, but because this time around, Umbrella was throwing in, as a precious extra, a copy of The Love Epidemic.
Oh sure it’s 4:3, and it’s barebones — no extras for the extra — and the hairs in the gate evoke its 16mm origins and there’s plenty of combing, but the image is otherwise in surprisingly good condition — bright colours, a relative lack of film and digital artefacts — and it runs at correct weight, almost 85 minutes, suggesting that this is the genuine, uncensored, ridgy-didge dramadoc in all its original glory.
Long may Umbrella continue to resurrect these treasures from the vault .
1. Zdroj:
One of the key features of the Australian revival was the willingness of film-makers to explore sex — either in documentaries, like John Lamond in the ABC of Love and sex Australia Style, in comedies like Alvin Purple, and in porn romps that ranged from the soft core, like Štěstí, to the more hard-edged Fantasm.
The source of these films — and to documentaries like Epidemie lásky, which offered a heady mix of information and titillation — might just as easily be attributed to the new «R» certificate, and the freedom it allowed to present sex and sexuality on the Australian screen, and in turn the desire of the new Hexagon/Roadshow alliance to exploit this freedom for commercial returns.
After years of being amongst the most heavily censored countries in the world — some claimed it was worse than South Africa — Australia was introduced to the sight of explicit images of sex on the big screen.
While ostensibly an educational and public service effort, this film in particular was designed to tap into the big city theatrettes that had once been newsreel-based but then began catering to the ‘raincoat brigade’ with soft porn flicks, usually from Europe and especially Scandinavia.
That said, it was also a chance for writer-director-producer Brian Trenchard-Smith to make his first feature film, albeit a dramadoc, and he delivered the explicit goods (including shots of stuntman Grant Page’s penis) to Roadshow, assisted by Michael Laurence, who wrote and starred in some of the sketch comedy material included to make a dramatic point about VD and STDs.
These scenes clearly show the influence of Woody Allen and Everything you Always Wanted to Know About Sex, který se objevil v roce 1972.
The film inspired a UK version by Stanley Long entitled It Could Happen to You.
The interests of Trenchard-Smith can also be seen at work. There is — if you look hard enough — a link between the subject matter at hand — the love epidemic — and a loving reconstruction of a violent attack on Naples (symbolised by Kyral castle outside Ballarat in Victoria) by the soldiers of Charles VIII of France . but anyone watching the flames and the stunts and the fighting will soon realise it’s actually just another excuse for the director to have some practise and some fun before shooting Muž z Hong Kongu v 1975.
2. Výroba:
The production was shot piecemeal, with Brian Trenchard-Smith having a number of productions on the go. He included some scenes in Hong Kong as a way of amortising the cost of other projects, including another Grant Page vehicle, Danger Freaks, and a project, Kung-fu zabijáci, intended to get Page’s name above the line.
In an essay for ACMI, zde Trenchard-Smith explains how he juggled his various projects, and also claims that he was Grant Page’s manager for the first five years of his career. Having scored the license fee for Kung-fu zabijáci, he then had to make the show for the money to hand:
As I was also shooting piecemeal material for both another Grant Page vehicle Danger Freaks, and my sexually transmitted diseases mockumentary (yes, you are not hallucinating!) The Love Epidemic, a Hexagon production, at that time, I incorporated Hong Kong sequences into both projects and was thus able to amortize a little of the cost of the Hong Kong shoot. Nonetheless I only had $13,000 cash to make the picture. But extensive use of clips donated by Run Run Shaw of Shaw Brothers and Raymond Chow of Golden Harvest, seeking to publicise Asian cinema to western audiences, would help fill out the running time. I would also incorporate unused footage of Grant from The Stuntmen. Waste not, want not, my mother used to say.
Trenchard-Smith shamelessly includes footage of Page performing stunts and ku fu in Hong Kong, and the remote connection to the story at hand is firmed up by Page catching an STD in Hong Kong, discovering it in the shower, and heading off to the VD clinic in Sydney.
Trenchard-Smith also persuaded actor Roger Ward to tell an anecdote of taking a Fijian woman, who turned out to be albino, out to his yacht for a bit of action. He thought he’d caught an STD, which turned out to be a case of ringworm.
On a rock ‘n roll cult level, the film is distinguished by Trenchard-Smith featuring Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs speaking frankly of sex and life on the road, and the way members of the band got some kind of STD some seventeen times (intercut with the band performing its notorious or legendary, depending on point of view, song, «We’ve come to fuck your mind», aka «We’ve come to blow your mind» in politer quarters).
Others who turn up for a period blast include Clyde Packer in his M.L.C. days, Bettina Arndt when she was consultant editor to Forum magazine, and Bobo Faulkner discussing a family scandal involving VD.
There’s also a man in a bed holding a large crab, to make a point about crabs, who looks alarmingly like the director.
3. Release:
The film was pitched in the market place as sexploitation and released in two former newsreel theatrettes which had shifted over to supply soft porn for the «raincoat brigade».
As a result, the film was generally perceived as a piece of ‘sexploitation’ rather than a useful or well-intentioned documentary concerned with VD and the spread of STDs.
Towards the end of January 1975, after the film’s premiere on 3rd January 1975 in Sydney and Melbourne, two of the cast — Luda Apinys and Ken Doyle — sought an injunction to have the film withdrawn on the ground that they had understood they were acting in an educational film, but that the film that appeared was ‘nothing but pornography’ (Oxford Australian Film). The action failed, the film continued to be distributed, and did well at the Australian box office.
However it was obviously a matter of some sensitivity. Even when asked about the matter in an interview in Kino papíry, December-January 1979-1980, Trenchard Smith declined to comment:
I’d rather not talk about it. To defend myself as accurately as I deserve — which the newspapers never bothered to do — would probably invite new legal problems from some disenchanted loser.
Instead he talked of the film as a learning experience:
The Love Epidemic was interesting, insofar as it taught me a great deal about veneral disease, and I always like to learn something out of each new film. While I am not inviting people to come to me as a diagnostician, I can tell you that I know a great deal about it now.
4. Datum:
This site dates films according to the year of completion of production. While there are no copyright notices or dates on prints that now circulate, given that the film was released on 3rd January 1975, it is clear that the film was finished in 1974, and that is the year it is given on this site.
5. Michael Laurence:
Writer Michael Laurence, who contributed to the comedy material in the film, had a short CV available on his agent’s website (HLA Management Australia), zde as of November 2014. It read:
Michael Laurence worked extensively as an actor in the United Kingdom and Australia. In 1970 he commenced his writing career in Australia by creating and starring in his own TV series for the Nine Network entitled The Godfathers, writing and appearing in all 72 episodes. The series won the Logie Award for Best Television Comedy. Michael went on to create and write close to two hundred hours of commercially successful television.
Michael Laurence was Creator/Writer/Associate Producer/Creative Consultant for The Lost Islands a 22 (in reality 26) part children’s series for the 10 Network and Paramount Pictures and was a regular writer for the hit series Number 96 on Network Ten.
Michael’s work was recognised internationally with the television hit Return to Eden Michael was Creator, Writer and Co-producer of the six hour mini-series for Hanna Barbara and Network Ten. The mini-series continues to enjoy repeats in many parts of the world. Michael went onto create the television series spin off, Return to Eden, and wrote 22 episodes.
Michael was Creator and Writer of The Last Frontier, a four hour mini-series, produced by McElroy & McElroy, Network Ten and CBS Network, USA. Starring Linda Evans.
Creator/Director Which Way Home – a three hour movie special for Television, McElroy & McElroy/Southern Star (Live Action) and Turner Network, USA. Starring Cybill Shepherd and John Waters.
Writer of The Shadow of the Cobra – a four hour mini-series for View Films/Zenith Productions, London. Based around the life of Charles Sobhraj.
Public health movie stocking stuffers
If you are looking for two great public health movies to snuggle up with your family on the couch this holiday season, here are two recommendations: «Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet» and «How To Survive A Plague.»
by By Janet Golden, professor of history, Rutgers University-Camden
Published Dec. 10, 2013, 6:30 a.m. ET
If you are looking for two great public health movies to snuggle up with your family on the couch or to buy for your woefully public-health-history-ignorant friends this holiday season I have two recommendations: Magická kulka doktora Ehrlicha, a Hollywood biopic made in 1940 starring Edward G. Robinson, and How To Survive A Plague, a 2012 documentary.
These Oscar-nominated films (the first for best screenplay, the second for feature documentary) deal with the battle against what were once called venereal diseases and are today referred to as sexually transmitted infections (STIs) or diseases (STDs). They deliver a similar message: ignorance can be the greatest enemy of public health. That’s a message we can all embrace this holiday season, right.
In Magická kulka doktora Ehrlicha, the valiant German Jewish scientist Paul Ehrlich confronts repeated failures and professional skepticism to develop the first cure for syphilis in 1909 — arsphenamine (Salvarsan). While the movie doesn’t do full justice to the real Dr. Ehrlich’s many brilliant scientific contributions, for which he won a Nobel prize in 1908, the film’s release was in itself a triumph over ignorance. In bringing the subject of syphilis to the screen, Warner Brothers took a bold step. Venereal disease was a subject thought unfit for polite discussion, much less for mass media. The producers managed to get around the Motion Picture Production Code (Hays Code), which stated that «Sex hygiene and venereal disease are not subjects for motion pictures» by rarely using the term syphilis and focusing the film on scientific discovery and on Ehrlich as scientist. Despite their boldness in mentioning a venereal disease, the film’s producers shied away from mentioning Ehrlich’s religious background, even as the United States was engaged in fighting a Nazi regime that purged all mentions of Ehrlich’s work because he was Jewish.
Syphilis treatment with penicillin replaced arsphenamine in the late 1940s and the number of reported cases of syphilis in the United States fell dramatically. Nevertheless, syphilis remains a global health problem today, with 12 million cases worldwide. The figures for sexually transmitted infections are stunning. According to the World Health Organization an estimated 500 million people become ill each year with one of four STIs: chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and trichomoniasis.
Death haunts both films. Magická kulka doktora Ehrlicha opens with a young man’s suicide after he learns his diagnosis and that he can never be cured and therefore able to marry his sweetheart. Jak přežít mor shows individual deaths and presents statistics about the number of deaths worldwide. It focuses on the efforts of members of ACT UP (the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power) and TAG (the Treatment Action Group) to force the public health establishment to respond to the AIDS crisis and to demand that political leaders invest the needed resources into research and treatment. The inaction of American presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. Bush, as well as the homophobic vitriol of Senator Jesse Helms, are presented. The real story, however, belongs to the men and women, many of them HIV positive, who confront the establishment and demand that the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and elected officials change their research agendas and drug approval protocols to respond to what activists correctly called a plague. (The work of these activists and researchers is also chronicled in an online exhibit from the National Library of Medicine.)
What began with a 1981 report of a rare lung infection in five previously healthy young gay men is now known as a global health crisis. Since the beginning of the epidemic, more than 75 million people have contracted HIV and nearly 36 million have died from HIV-related causes. In the United States today, there are nearly 1.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS, with approximately 50,000 new infections each year. Those horrifying numbers remind us that the battle continues. Information on HIV/AIDS is available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Although more than six decades separate the two films, both speak to the lethal effects of stigmatizing sexually transmitted infections. What visually unites the two eras are the «Silence = Death» signs with pink triangles created by activists to draw attention to the AIDS crisis. The pink triangles reference the Nazi regime, which forced homosexuals to wear an inverted pink triangle. On the signs today, the triangles stand up, just as the activists are standing up and demanding action. Popular films typically present heroic scientists battling dangerous bacteria or viruses and saving the public from certain death by conquering disease outbreaks. While Magická kulka doktora Ehrlicha leans in that direction, it also offers a critique of the silence surrounding syphilis. Jak přežít mor, while much more direct, presents the same message. Sometimes the first step in securing the public’s health is conquering ignorance and fear.
Janet Golden, a Rutgers University history professor, specializes in the histories of medicine, childhood and women. While this is her first post about movies, she has written about blues music – both the bug and bacterial varieties.
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