"The white dust from Hell!"

As we saw yesterday, early exploitation films weren't limited to the ridicule of marijuana in their films. The film Cocaine Fiends, also known as The Pace that Kills, was first made as a silent film in 1928 where a young farm boy goes to the city and is ruined by "dope". The film was remade with sound in 1935 under the same title with a new cast, though some footage from the old movie was used as well. At the time, it was billed as a "Public Information Film" with the intention to inform the American peoples of the dangers of cocaine. For those of you that want, the film can be found here to watch.

The plot follows along the basic exploitation film outline. In the film, small town girl Jane Bradford (Lois January) meets charming Nick (Noel Madison), who unbeknownst to her is a drug pusher, even though his official screen name is Nick the Pusher. Nick lures Jane with promises of a fast paced life in the city and some questionable white powder he says can cure her headaches. They go off to the big city and Jane becomes addicted to the cocaine, loosing all interest in her family. Jane's brother Eddie (Dean Benton) comes to the big city to look for her and while working as a car-hop, attractive customer Fanny (Shelia Manners) gets him hooked on the white stuff as well. Dorothy Farley (Lois Lindsay) comes into the lives of both Eddie and Jane. She is dating a detective named Dan (Charles Delaney), so things get tricky when Nick kidnaps Dorothy and tries to get her hooked on the drugs as well. Its another classic tale where innocence is lost then regained and the good are rewarded while the evildoers are punished.

The film has become a large cult classic at film festivals and there is even a band named after Jane Bratford. Of course, its easy to see why the film has such a cult following since it features a club called "The Dead Rat". Like most exploitation films, this is a b-movie with some bad acting, bad camera and lighting (mainly due to the film being made in 1935 on a low budget), and spread a lot of misinformation and implausible situations. It always astounds me how dumb and guillible a lot of the characters in these films are.

For those of you who want more information to explore about this film, I have a few things you might want to look at. First, The Spinning Image, a UK blog about various films, has done a synopsis, background, history, and review of the film, which can be read here. Again, our friends at 1000 Misspent Hours have done another review of the cult classic and why they find it unwatchable, which can be found here. For those of you who particularly like movie posters, you can check out this article from the Weird Poster blogspot about the particularly gruesome and yet hilarious posters made for this film The blog has a great collection of movie posters that just have to be seen to believe.