The Pace That Kills (Wm. A. O'Connor, 1935)

Nick (Noel Madison) and his cohort are making a cocaine delivery for their boss when they find themselves pursued by the cops. Nick goes to a diner, where he meets waitress Jane Bradford (Lois January), who he convinces that the men following him are hijackers. Afterwards, he tries to convince her to go to the city with him. He offers her some coke, which he calls "headache powder." They marry and move to the big city. Jane, now called Lil, learns that the "headache powder" is actually dope. Now hooked, she is forced by Nick to get a job at the Dead Rat Cafe. Meanwhile, Jane's younger brother Eddie (Dean Benton) comes to the city to look for her, getting a job as a carhop at a drive-in restaurant, where he works alongside waitress Fanny (Sheila Bromley), a customer of Nick's. Lil recognizes Eddie at the restaurant, and is careful not to be seen by him. Later, at the Dead Rat, Eddie does see Lil, who pretends she doesn't know him. They also encounter Dan (Charles Delaney) and his "questing" girlfriend Dorothy Farley (Lois Lindsay), who were also at the restaurant. Fanny introduces Eddie to cocaine, and soon they're both fired, and living as addicts in a cheap apartment.

Anti-drug films of the '30s are often good for a few easy laughs, such as the infamous Reefer Madness, but The Pace That Kills (aka The Cocaine Fiends, a remake of the 1928 silent film of the same name, with which it shares Wm. A. O'Connor as director), while not exactly the searing indictment its opening text makes it out to be, is less histrionic and more depressing than Dwain Esper's cult classic. Although the film never shows the characters actually taking cocaine, the effects of the drug on addicts are shown in a fairly realistic manner. All the drug users have tragic fates, with the possible exception of Eddie, and he will have to deal with heartbreaking loss even if he kicks the habit. Jane, meanwhile thinks she has no hope of ever going straight, telling her brother "girls can't come back," an obvious bullshit sexist premise. In addition to the sexism, there's also a racist song in pidgin English sung by a guy at the Dead Rat (and who wouldn't want to frequent an establishment with that name?) called "Towsee Mongalay." As a (hopefully) enlightened Millennial, this song made me cringe.

The performances are mostly understated, with Lois January as the initially naive Jane/Lil being a standout. Amazingly, four years later, she would appear in The Wizard of Oz as Dorothy's manicurist in the Emerald City! Charles Delaney's last film role was in The Beatniks, notable for characters who resembled beatniks in no way, shape, or form, not to mention a wildly overacting Peter Breck, who gives the shrillest delivery of the line "I KILLED THAT FAT BARKEEP!!!" imaginable. In a golden example of how financial times march on, Eddie and Fanny's bill of $9.79 at the Dead Rat is portrayed as exorbitant spending. Fanny also points out an actress to Eddie, who is played by stock footage from the original The Pace That Kills of the actress who played Fanny in that film! This never becomes important to the plot, so I assume it was added for padding. The happy ending for Dan and Dorothy doesn't ring true, particularly as we find Dan has been lying to her the whole film. This is a pretty unspectacular anti-dope film for the era, certainly never reaching the heights of Dave O'Brien imploring Lillian Miles to "Play faster!" on the piano while they both furiously puff on joints, but it's worth a view for those who want to see how America's attitude towards drugs has evolved over time.