The Pace That Kills

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.

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.

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.

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.