Because of Eve (The Story of Life) is a combination of several roadshow hygiene pictures: The Story of VD, The Story of Reproduction, and The Story of Birth. These informative films have been given a narrative involving a young couple in love to give it dramatic weight. It’s also a great way to get four movies for the price of one.
Sally (Wanda McKay) and Bob (John Parker) are newlyweds thinking of starting a family. They flashback to their first visit with Dr. West (Joseph Crehan) before they got married when they first learned about each other’s sordid pasts. You see, Bob had VD and Sally had a baby out of wedlock. When their secrets threatened to tear them apart, the good doctor showed them a bunch of filmstrips to educate them for the road ahead.
The scene where the doctor drops the bombshell on the couple was in the past two documentaries I watched (Sex and Buttered Popcorn and Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies), and each time they showed it, it remained a jaw-dropper. Seeing it in its proper context is even better. It’s really something. Not so much for the stilted acting and flat direction, but because of the utter frankness of the dialogue. I’m sure audiences at the time weren’t used to hearing that sort of thing in movies. It still works though, and packs as much of a punch now as it did back in ‘48.
The Story of VD on its own is incredible. The extreme closeups of syphilis-ridden sex organs with giant open sores are disgusting and the images of dead syphilitic babies are horrifying. It's also packed with lots of ballyhoo and amazing narration like, “Three million people are walking or HOBBLING along our streets today with syphilis!” It’s all enough to put you off sex for at least a week. That is to say, it’s brutally effective.
The dramatic sequences are a doozy too. The scene of Sally alone in her room being hysterical is especially memorable. “That’s when I realized we were… IN TROUBLE!” (Cue the swelling orchestral music!) Later, she gets scared out of a skid row abortion clinic and eventually tries to end it all. (The newspaper headline reads: “CO-ED TRIES SUICIDE!”)
Once Sally and Bob confess their pasts to one another, they decide to forgive and forget and press on with the marriage. But not before the doctor shows them the facts of life via the filmstrip, The Story of Reproduction. It’s clinical and factual. It’s definitely nowhere near the horror show The Story of VD was. It was here I thought the movie was going downhill. I was wrong. It was saving the best for last.
Eventually, Bob and Sally become expectant parents. After the doctor gives them the good news, he shows them yet another film, The Story of Birth. This is quite simply one of the gnarliest movies ever put on screen. The scene of the “normal” vaginal birth scene was a piece of cake. However, the C-section scene is some real Faces of Death-type stuff. You actually get to see doctors hacking layer after layer from a woman’s belly before ripping the baby out. That part is grody by itself. Then comes the scene where they stitch her back up. Man, I started getting queasy and whoozy on this part. I mean when the director shows the patient being sewed up, he shows every damn stitch and staple along the way. Nothing is spared. No cutaways. Just pure old medical procedure footage. I bet this had ‘em puking in the aisles back in the day.
Simply put, Because of Eve (The Story of Life) is one of the best roadshow movies ever made and one of the ultimate exploitation flicks of all time.
No comments:
Post a Comment