One Way Ticket to Hell

I must admit that I got quickly hooked, like heroine abuser Barbara Marks does here, on the way this docudrama is told as Marks goes from troubled young school girl hanging out with a motorcycle gang and on occasion smoking pot to a full fledged gangster's moll on the run, desperately searching for her next fix. Bamlet Lawrence Price Jr. is the young man responsible for this film, having written and directed and co-starred in it, casting his parents, and trying to sell the evils of the drug counter culture as he attempted to break into the world of movie making. As his film resume shows, that never came to pass, but what results here is a noble attempt to tell a story, documentary style, and send a message of the evils of the world of drugs. Other than a few screeches or gasps, the actors here never speak, and only Kurt Martell's voice is heard as a narcotics cop involved in the case of the young woman he follows throughout the film to bring both to justice and to sobriety.

As the film starts, Marks and her parents (played by Price's parents) are being escorted by Martell to Union Station in L.A., either to be taken to a dry out ward or to go to court. Price Jr. is seen in the background as a Mexican thug who only shows up in the last half, with the first half showing Marks going from the motorcycle gang to unhappy wife to drug seller as a car hop waitress. This does not seem to have been meant for theatrical release, but somebody who saw it must have thought it important in the world of teenage angst of the 1950's to be shown in theaters. It is cheaply done and some of the situations are presented in rather ridiculous ways, but something about it does command your attention. Elaine Lindenbaum, as an aging heroine addict, reminded me of Anna Magnani, and her footage is unforgettable. There's no comparing this to the 1930's anti-marijuana films "Marijuana" or "Reefer Madness", as this never shows the wacky trips of those using the drugs, but there are some elements that bring on unintentional laughter such as the abundance of drug users going through withdrawal when the supply of the various drugs they are addicted to runs out or is unavailable due to the absence of the pushers. This goes both into the bowels of the L.A. drug counter culture and deep into the wastelands of Baja California north of the Mexican border. Even if you excuse the cheapness of the film, there is just far too much going on with far too many characters, but that does go to show the complexity of an ugly world where sometimes the only way to get off is death.

I think that making fun of this film or simply dismissing it is a big mistake. Sure, it doesn't seem like a very good film when you watch it. However, when you realize that the film maker made this for his masters thesis and only spent about $14,000 making it, it's actually a commendable film. After all, despite its cheesiness, the film is watchable and surprisingly good.

The biggest deficiency was surely due to the cheap equipment employed for the film. I assume 8 or 16mm cameras were used. And, the equipment did not include sound recording! So, the entire film is narrated in a Jack Webb-style and sound effects were later added. Actually, the quality and integration of the sound effects were pretty good. The biggest deficiency was the rather cheesy soundtrack--simple sax or flute music and the like.

The story is about a young lady whose life is a mess. The film begins after she's a heroin addict with a record and backtracks to the many steps she took leading to this horrible life. The story is supposedly told by a narcotics officer who talks about this criminal and his many contacts with her. It's all clearly meant to shock audiences and is one of the countless anti-drug educational films of the era--most of which were pretty poorly made.

On the plus side, most of the drug information in the film is good and the equipment and lifestyle are reasonably well represented. The low quality of the production and cheese-factor, though, will probably make many laugh at it today. Just remember, though, it originally was NOT intended as a feature film and was made by an inexperienced film maker and non-professional actors. So don't be too hard on it.

One Way Ticket to Hell (1955)

BOMB (out of 4)

Cassandra (Barbara Marks) was once a sweet, innocent little girl but sadly she was raised by a mother who jumped from man to man. Eventually Cassandra starts dating a biker, which leads her to trying marijuana for the first time. Pretty soon she's a strung out heroin addict but can anyone save her life?

According to the IMDB, the director Bamlet Lawrence Price Jr. shot this for $14,000 while attending UCLA. This was his Master's thesis film and I should mention a student film. With that said, I love the "drug" genre that this film is trying to be a part of. With that said, movies like REEFER MADNESS and others were awful films that were thankfully so bad that you could laugh at them.

Sadly, ONE WAY TICKET TO HELL isn't so bad it's good. Instead it's just downright awful on every level and even though I understand the conditions that it was made, it's still impossible to find anything nice to say about the picture. Like a lot of movies from this period, it's told via narration ike you'd see during an episode of Dragnet. The problem is that there's nothing interesting beign said to us and even worse is the actual lead character.

I'm not sure what the director was going for but she's such an unlikeable character that you just don't care whether she lives or dies. You don't care about the people around here and there's just nothing here to connect with. The entire film comes in at just 58-minutes and it honestly felt ten times that. The film was really hard to make it through as you're smacked in the face with one bad scene after another.

...considering that none of the actors had any dialogue and considering the lousy music.

"Cassandra Leigh" (Barbara Marks) is a young high school senior who makes good grades but feels suffocated at home by her domineering mother. One day while at work she meets a small group of motorcyclists and decides to start hanging out with them. One thing leads to another and soon she begins devoting more and more time smoking marijuana with her new friends while spending less time with her family and former friends. She also begins neglecting her homework which results in her grades dropping to such a significant degree that she is no longer eligible for entry into a college. With few other choices available she decides to marry her high school boyfriend but then finds life so meaningless that she soon gravitates to drugs. It's at this time that her life spirals out of control. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that I thought the underlying story was quite interesting. Unfortunately, the method of using a narrative style--instead of having the actors speaking their lines--really hurt the overall entertainment value of the film. As a matter of fact, this technique almost made it seem more like a documentary than a movie. Again, it had an interesting plot but all things considered I have to rate this movie as below average.