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.

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.

While on the run from the police in the countryside, small time city drug seller Nick meets an innocent country girl, Jane, who he easily wins over with his easy charm and magical headache cure (which Jane is unaware is cocaine). After several dates (and several hits) Jane moves to the city with Nick in order to get married and live the city high life. However, moving into a poor home in a bad neighbourhood, Jane hits bottom when Nick moves her out of the house and her need for drugs becomes increasingly desperate. With her mother worried as to her whereabouts, Jane's brother and his girlfriend try to find her – but even for them the world of illegal drugs has an overpowering and destructive influence.

Unlike many other viewers on this site, I did not deliberately turn to this film to have ironic laughs at it but more out of interest. I had seen clips of this film played in modern documentaries (Grass for example) and easily derided and, in fairness, it is easy to do because they are dated and rather corny but just to watch it with an agenda to mock it is to do the film (and yourself) a disservice. It is easy to forget that this was one of many attempts to control drug use in the 1930's, the Government turned to movies as part of trying to educate the public. Looking at it now of course, the film is pretty extreme in its depiction of the consequences but it is not as bad as others claim – it does show the good side of drugs, the feelings that it gives you etc but the consequences for every user will not be as extreme as this film tries to portray as the norm for even an one-time casual user; like Bill Hicks said 'never robbed nobody, never shot nobody, never lost one single job. Laughed my *ss off, and went about my day' (I'm paraphrasing).

In terms of its value as a film, it is of course pretty weak. The direction is OK but the production values are low even for the period; some shots are really badly lit, the film crackles and jumps around a lot due to frequent dropped frames and the soundtrack cuts in and out quite badly. The acting is also only average; it would be easy to criticise the actors for how quickly they take their characters from clean cut down to junkies but that is not their fault – they were only doing what they were told and I did think that they did do an OK job. Let's not forget that this is not a movie – it is an educational film and even today the production values and acting within educational films is still pretty dire; the last one I was a short film on confined space entry with William Shatner – hardly a piece of art!

I do think, despite retrospectively looking at it and seeing the way it over eggs the cake, that the film is a good try. It readily acknowledges the easy appeal of the drug (like it or not, many of us have tried drugs because they were available and, consequences or not, maybe have habits we never intended to) by showing how simple and fun it is to try once or twice as a casual thing. It also acknowledges the causes rather well – citing broken families, innocence and heck, just good old fashioned youthful rebellion and reckless abandon as reasons for getting into the scene in the first place; all reasons that apply today. I'm not going overboard on praise for this film but I think it is easy to laugh at it as a naïve, dated piece and just ignore the fact that it does have some good even if it does go to extremes in every case. It would have been better to show that drugs doesn't take every user to a moral low, some just do it as a occasional bit of fun but that, for some users, it does become an addiction and can lead to disease, moral decline, abuse and death, because for some this is the reality.

Overall, this is not a good film by any stretch of the imagination, but if you only watch it to get ironic laughs while you smoke some puff then you are not giving it a chance or meeting it on its own ground – that of the mid-thirties. The production is average at best – poor lighting, a poor script, simplistic characters and a real biased spin to the story, but it does have some good in it. It does acknowledge the appeal of the drugs (it doesn't paint those who chose to do drugs as morally deficient in any way) as well as showing an awareness of the deeper causation factors. Of course it is biased and goes to extremes in every case but it is not as bad as many say it is if you try to view it objectively and not just roar 'it's so bad it's good' within 2 minutes of starting it.

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.

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.