The Pace That Kills

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.

Cocaine Fiends is one of the movies from the 1930's drugsploitation sub-genre. This, along with the superior Reefer Madness, simultaneously condemned and celebrated - intentionally or otherwise - the then taboo subject of drug abuse. Where Reefer Madness works as an unintentional comedy, Cocaine Fiends adopts a less overblown approach and, as a result, is liable to be much less entertaining to today's audiences. The production values are very low but the acting is OK. The story is exaggerated but there are no over-the-top scenes of drug-induced insanity. The film is best appreciated as a time capsule from the 1930s. It provides an insight into the attitudes of the time to drug use and its consequences. It does not, unfortunately, provide much in the way of laughs.

Also, the sound quality of the release I saw was was fairly horrendous. It was very hard at times working out what was being said. Ironically, this, coupled with the very flickery picture and deranged editing, produced the effect of watching the movie on drugs. But not very good drugs.

... and I think people are too quick to look at a camp classic like "Reefer Madness" that shows people smoking one joint and becoming, simultaneously, great piano players, sex fiends, and trigger happy, all while maniacally laughing and think that this film is like that one. You'd be wrong.

Alternatively titled "Cocaine Fiends", this is pretty realistic in showing the effects of cocaine on people and how the addiction is slow and subtle, creeping up on you until you are hooked. The bad guy is Nick, who, on the run from the police, ends up in a diner and gives the girl running it some "headache powders" for her headaches. He woos her with promises of marriage, and gets her to come to the big city with him. Today this all looks pretty obvious, but pre WWII, most people lived in rural environments and trusted one another. Needless to say, the girl gets none of her promises kept once she gets to the city, and is so addicted to cocaine she simply just can't leave.

In the meantime her brother is looking for her after she basically disappears with no letters back home, but he runs into a partying crowd and ends up addicted too.

There are the cheap rented rooms, women being driven to the oldest profession to survive, the flop houses where addicts get their fix and then recover, implied kidnapping and forced prostitution, and strangely enough a rich girl who keeps turning up in scenes who winds up having to do with a bigger story - the search for a "Mister Big" who is directing Nick and head of the drug and prostitution rackets. The story unwinds in an interesting and even pretty well acted way given I had never heard of any of the players. It must have been pretty hard dodging the censors and yet having a realistic story. Maybe that's why a rather contrived happy ending is tacked on to the end, although it seems out of place in the midst of all of the tragedy.

I'd recommend it. Just realize that I don't know of any good quality copies in circulation and the film "skips" so at times pieces of conversation are lost.

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.

1st watched 1/27/2007 - 4 out of 10(Dir-Wm. A. O'Connor): Actual attempt to make a good movie from a 1930's public service announcement premise is rather shocking in it's portrayal of addicts in the mob world of drugs, for it's time. Despite this, it's flaws include silly entertainment thrown in near the end, quick changes in people's characters(it's almost as if they ripped out sections of some the character's development) and a sometimes overdone emphasis of the complete moral decay of those involved in the use of dope(as they call it in the movie) to the point of forgetting their past life. The movie is ultimately about the demise of a sister and brother after initially being tricked to use a "headache powder" which is really cocaine. The mobster's, leading the way, use every kind of trick in the book to hook the person on the drug, and then they rule their lives from this point on. Again, for it's time, this movie does a pretty good job of showing the horrors without being campy(like other movies of this type) but a good try is still not quite good enough, though.