The Pace That Kills

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.

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.

... 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.

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.