Just This Side Of The Ratings System ...

The Production Code In Twilight: A Covenant With Death (1967)

Hollywood's covenant with long-standing enforcement of its  Production Code was headed for the finish as adult-themed dramas stood on brakes at eve of a ratings system that would turn loose frankness in films. A Covenant With Death represented a last of tentative reach toward themes long forbidden, in this case ginger approach at sex disease that leads an infected wife to promiscuity and death, her accused husband begging mercy from inexperienced judge George Maharis. Not what I'd call pleasant subject matter, and you wonder what boxoffice WB could expect of melodrama enacted by a refugee lead from television and support culled also from tube ranks. There is Maharis clocking bed-time with femme partners, this a declaration of walls tumbling down, but dialogue and situations barely pass speed limits observed by Susan Slade and others of a Code compliant past. That would, of course, change, and within mere months, as Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf (released 6/66) breached walls of censorship eroded further by Warners with Bonnie and Clyde in later 1967, beside which A Covenant With Death looks timid indeed. Available in a fine 1.85 transfer from Warner Archive.