The Pace That Kills

I wish this movie rose to the level of entertaining camp. But it doesn't. Instead, it's simply a bad low-budget film with few redeeming qualities. I take "camp" to mean that a scene(s) is laughably overdone because of either acting, scripting, or staging. Here the narcotic scenes are not ludicrously overdone like those in the notorious Reefer Madness. Rather, the dope (cocaine, and apparently opium) either puts a smile on the user's face or puts him into a dreamy haze-- not exactly the burlesque of that 1936 classic.

To me, the only scenes that approach camp are the two ridiculous singing acts, especially the singing waiter whose weird eye-rolling is priceless. Also, there's little titillation of the sort that characterizes most 30's exploitation films-- no nude, semi-nude or even seduction scenes. As usual for these films, the city is presented as a corruptive influence on small town innocents who are preyed upon by ruthless city-slickers. Then too, there's the notorious double standard in play. Note how the girls "can't go home again" after being corrupted, but Eddie can go once he kicks the habit. There are aspects of the typical exploitation flick, but the result looks more like an artless attempt to warn youth away from drugs of any sort. The trouble is that both the story- line and the cost-cutting are much too obvious.

In the 1930's, a rash of "youth gone wild" films hit theatres and grindhouses across the U. S. These "cautionary tales" were really no more than cheap exploitation films marketed under the guise of advisory: don't let this happen to you or your children, and watch as they act like sex-crazed maniacs! Alluring, repulsive, campy, and downright horrible in equal measure, these films tried so hard and yet failed so spectacularly to be either entertaining to its target audience or informational, riddled as they were with sub-par talent and heinous misinformation. While the granddaddy of all of these is the now-classic "Reefer Madness", a few years before that came "The Pace That Kills", marketed today under the title "Cocaine Fiends."

Jane (Lois January) is a good country girl that helps Mother out in the local cafe. When fast-talking criminal Nick (Noel Madison) hides out in her diner, Jane is swept up in his life of big city crime and cocaine peddling with her first shot of Nick's special "headache powder". He convinces her to move to the city with him, where she quickly becomes a strung-out addict with no control over her life and renames herself "Lil". Also dragged into this malestrom of mobsters, molls, and white dust is Jane's naive brother Eddie (Dean Benton), his impressionable girlfriend, and a spoiled heiress. Crime, perversion, and youth gone "wild" abound!

Obviously, the idea of wild was much different 70 years ago. The most wild acts in the film -- including cocaine use, unmarried sex, and murder -- are shown off camera or only hinted at. In fact, the main hook of the film is largely absent from most of it. We're supposed to believe that because of cocaine, all of these characters are doomed, yet the drug itself only comes up a handful of times in the course of the picture. As for the "perversion", girls show no skin and the romantic relations between the characters lack anything resembling passion or chemistry. Compare this to "Reefer Madness", where several female characters were shown in states of undress and the targeted drug played a central role in the direct downfall of several of the characters.

The script is merely mediocre, and the acting is surprisingly adept, although given the context of the film, it doesn't take much to impress. Lois January is actually quite convincing as Jane/Lil, and toward the end of the film, when she gives in to her new persona, you believe the actress' pain. Dean Benton also has a few good moments, especially during a speech where Eddie realizes that he is, indeed, a "hophead." Where the film falters is pacing, structure, plot, and direction. Which, of course, means the foundation of the entire film is shaky at best. The last act veers wildly off its already worn tracks, and while it mostly avoids the fatalistic ending of "Reefer Madness", it also makes no sense in relation to the rest of the story. A good half of the subplots of the film are never resolved or brought together, and viewers will end up feeling cheated. And to feel cheated by "Cocaine Fiends" is a low that not even the finest "headache powder" will cure. The film tries desperately to blend drama, romance, musical, action, and crime into a whole and fails to produce anything resembling any of those.

Part of this may be due to the print itself. Although billed at 68 minutes here on the IMDB, the Alpha Home Video DVD print (which bills the film as "Cocaine Fiends" in a value-priced, stand-alone DVD) is only 60 minutes, and in at least half of the scenes, the film itself skips, leaving several lines of dialogue and explanation in a bloody heap on the cutting room floor. The sound is also horrendous, and Eddie's girlfriend seemed to go by any number of names due to the appalling lack of clarity in the audio track (I heard Betty, Fanny, Sandy, and a few others). In comparison, "Reefer Madness"'s print is in much better shape.

Although the film does have a few redeeming moments, and it's great for a laugh or for sampling into your latest electronica masterpiece, it's a pale shadow of "Reefer Madness", a standard by which it has no choice but to be judged against. Better to skip this one and go to the wild abandon to end all wild abandons. At least for 1930's youth. 3 out of 10.

If you've seen "Reefer Madness", you can skip "Cocaine Fiends/Pace That Kills". The same overblown scare tactics used in "Reefer Madness" are tried again here, but to limited success. At least "Madness" showed what marijuana looked like; cocaine is mentioned and abused but never actually shown. The same old plot of "good kids turned bad by dope" is re-hashed, but not as directly as in other films, so it gets talky when it shouldn't. The first taste of a drug apparently turns you into a monstrous irresponsible waste of humanity, or a "hop head" as the main character laments. Besides exaggerating consequences to the nth degree, "Fiends" has editing that makes you seasick. Characters simply vanish between film splices and cars appear out of nowhere. It's not funny, it's annoying. Although I'm not in favor of drug use at all, it's fun to see something subvert straightlaced black-and-white America. Anarchists will love this movie, but everyone else will find it rather dull.

This was the first of those 1930s drug-scare exploitation movie I ever saw. I hadn't even seen Reefer Madness. I just knew a little about the genre and figured this would be an amusing little romp.

Well, it wasn't exactly. At points it was funny, but mostly it was boring and slow. It did provide a fairly candid view of every day American life in the thirties. Since the makers of this film clearly didn't have the finances that MGM or Universal lavished on their pictures, there aren't any striking Art Deco sets of Adrian gowns. Speaking of which, the set's are some of the most stark and unconvincing pieces of dressing ever to go before a movie camera. And, since the filmmakers probably didn't even have the kind of money that Continental or Majestic spent, you have to wonder if this movie wasn't shot the way Little Shop of Horrors was. I think of that roadhouse set and wonder "What lost and forgotten B movie was that really built for?"

A note of interest: Do you know that scene in Wizard of Oz where everybody's getting sproused up and some attractive supporting actress sings "We can make a dimpled smile out of a frown"? Well, that chick is the star of The Pace That Kills! Her name is Lois January and she's not a bad actress either.

This film, better known by its alternate title of "Cocaine Fiends," is a good example (not a good movie, mind you; just a good example) of the ultra-cheap "exploitation" market that existed in the '30s and '40s. Independent producers like Willis Kent--who made this--specialized in sensationalistic, "taboo" subjects that the major studios, and even the minor ones, wouldn't dare to touch. Titles like "Cocaine Fiends," "Reefer Madness," "Sex Madness," "Confessions of a Vice Baron", "Escort Girls", etc., were guaranteed to draw crowds into the rural grindhouses and third-rate urban theaters for which they were designed. Since these films were outside (WAY outside) the mainstream Hollywood system, they didn't adhere to the rigid censorship that existed in America at that time, and consequently were able to tackle subjects (usually badly) and show material (usually nudity, though mostly partial) that patrons would otherwise be unable to see. I actually enjoy these films more than a lot of the "mainstream" product of the time. While MGM was churning out the bland, inoffensive Andy Hardy series, Dwain Esper was making "Reefer Madness," Willis Kent was putting out "Confessions of a Vice Baron" and J.D. Kendis was coming out with "The Vice Racket"--pictures that explored, however ineptly, a darker, seamier side of American life that most people didn't know, or didn't want to know, existed.

As for this picture, it's terrible, of course. Inept at virtually every conceivable level, it's nonetheless entertaining as an insight into the attitudes of American society of that time towards unpleasant subjects--which was, of course, to either ignore them, deny they existed or punish anyone unwise enough to bring them up. And lest anybody think that the "epidemic" of cocaine use is a recent phenomenon, they should know that this picture is itself a remake (by the same producer and director) of a 1928 film of the same name on the same subject, which shows that there was an apparently substantial problem in this country with hard drugs as far back as at least the 1920s--although you'd never know there was a problem with ANYTHING, judging by the "mainstream" films that came out of Hollywood. Alcoholism was treated as an amusing diversion, personified by the genial drunks of Arthur Housman and Jack Norton, and drug abuse (and, especially, sexual abuse) were such taboo subjects that the studios wouldn't even MENTION them in films, let alone make films about them. Although a few serious pictures in the '50s tackled some of these subjects, it wasn't until the '60s and '70s, when these problems couldn't be ignored any longer, that truly serious films about drug abuse, alcoholism and other societal afflictions began to be made.

Movies like "Cocaine Fiends" served their purpose--they made their producers money (they were shot so cheaply and quickly it was difficult NOT to make money off them) and gave the "renegade" movie audiences (as they were called at the time) a cheap thrill they wouldn't have gotten otherwise. They also had an unintended result--although somewhat exaggerated, they left an historical record of some of the problems that affected American society of the time, problems that subsequent generations would very likely have had little or no knowledge about if it wasn't for pictures like "Cocaine Fiends" and its brethren. If these films provided any public service at all, it was that.