The Seventh Commandment
Brief Synopsis
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
A young country boy leaves his small home town to seek fame and fortune in the city. He falls in with rough companions, who introduce him to nights of bawdy revelry in which ladies play strip poker, men dress as chorus girls, and sexual orgies take place on the floor. The young man, disgusted with his new life, decides to return to his hometown to marry his childhood sweetheart. However, the boy has contracted syphilis and must seek medical attention from a quack doctor, who bleeds him for money. When the boy protests, the doctor shows him a photograph of diseased genitals. Some time later, the boy's wife is taken to the hospital to give birth to their child, but must undergo a Caesarian section because she too has contracted the disease. After the operation, the child dies. Everything ends happily after the boy goes to a railroad yard, where he meets a tramp who preaches a sermon to him.
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
After he viewed this film, Joseph Breen declared that it was, without question, the most "thoroughly vile and discusting" movie he had ever seen.
This film is believed lost. Please check your attic.
Notes
The running time listed above was calculated from footage given in NYSA records. This was exploitation producer Dwain Esper's first film. According to information in the MPAA/PCA Collection at the AMPAS Library, this film was rejected by censor boards in Maryland, New York and Quebec. The film was passed by censor boards in Massachusetts and Virginia after deletions had been made. After members of the PCA, including director Joseph Breen, viewed the film in April 1935, Breen, in a memorandum, wrote that it was "the most thoroughly vile and disgusting motion picture which the three members of this staff, who saw the picture last night, have ever seen. It is thoroughly reprehensible in all its details. In addition, it is poorly produced and poorly photographed. The portion of the film given over to the Caesarian operation suggests a foreign picture, possibly a foreign medical picture. The whole thing is very offensive and disgusting."
According to the Hollywood Reporter review, the film's foreword states that "'the well-known men and women who gave their time and talents to the making of the picture,' prefer to remain anonymous," and goes on to add that the reporter did not recognize even one famous face. According to an ad in Motion Picture Daily, Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Examiner refused to run advertising copy for the film because of its explicit sexual content.
