Adults Only! -- Maniac (1934)

Oh man, I wanted to write a review for this -- I really, really did -- but all I managed to get out was "what the hell did I just watch?"  Well, that and  "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The Bad Movie Report has a brilliant review here if you want something more intelligent and cohesive.  What follows will be notes I made (after wiping the tears out of my eyes).

THIS IS THE GREATEST BAD MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN.

The plot (as if it mattered), from IMDb:
A former vaudevillian gifted at impersonation assists a mad scientist in reanimating corpses and soon goes mad himself.  (Why the hell is a vaudeville guy even working with a scientist?)

Memorable moments:

• Dr Mierschultz listening for a heartbeat on his victim.  IN THE MORGUE.
• More ham acting than a roomful of Barrymores!
• Bizarre intertitles about mental illness that pop up at random times -- with happy music!
• LSD trip double exposures!  
• Suddenly, gratutitous nudity!
• Eating of cat eyeballs!  "It is not unlike an OYSTER or a GRAPE!"
• Continuity?  What's that?  Even the cat has a bad stand-in.
• T & A ending that was mercifully tacked on for the viewers.  

and my favorite line:

"The cats eat the rats, the rats eat the cats, and I get the skins!"

HOLY CRAP this movie is off the rails.  It's made by the same folks who made Reefer Madness, so that should be no surprise.  

Best part of all?  It's available on Youtube.  GO WATCH IT.

Adults Only Double Feature! - The Pace That Kills (1935) / Assassin of Youth (1937)

The Pace That Kills aka Cocaine Fiends (1935)

Question for you:  if the person giving you "headache powders" insists they must be snorted to work, wouldn't that raise, I don't know, RED FLAGS?!

Lois January (whose claim to fame these days is as Dorothy's manicurist, turning her frown into a smile) plays Jane Bradford, a naive small-town girl lured into the downward spiral of cocaine by a smooth-talking man (Noel Madison); her big-city brother Eddie (Dean Benton) is suffering the same fate at the hands of a beautiful girl (Sheila Manners).  The picture gets weird, with a protracted nightclub scene featuring some dubious "talent":

Frank Collins, the Singing Waiter.  Surprisingly, this was his only film credit.

It all goes to hell in a handbasket at the end, with the nogoodniks getting their due and Jane sacrificing her future in order for Eddie to have one again.  There was one scene that made me sit up: a complete ripoff of Tallulah Bankhead's touching "leaving for the drugstore" from Faithless.  Nice attempt to lend a bit of pathos to the story, but it just didn't work.

Scorecard:  crime, drug use, violence, prostitution, sex, unwed pregnancy, suicide, bad nightclub acts

Six Degrees of Ten Nights in a Barroom:  Sheila Manners 

---

Assassin of Youth aka The Marihuana Menace aka Miss Gulch's Doppleganger (1937)

I was impressed by this one - it actually had a plot!  Not a feasible one, mind you, but it's the thought that counts.  Joan Barry (Luana Walters, who found work in mostly unbilled parts until she drank herself to death at age 50) plays a girl who must stay "good" in order to inherit her grandmother's fortune; she's faced at every turn by the dangers of her fast-living cohorts, namely Linda Clayton (Fay McKenzie), who is actively trying to knock Joan off her pedestal.  Why?  You'll have to watch the picture.  Undercover pedophile reporter Art Brighton strives to steer her out of their clutches before it's too late. 

The most fascinating part of the picture for me was discovering Fern Emmett.  How in the world can there be another person that looks, sounds, and laughs exactly like Margaret Hamilton?!  According to her page at Allmovie.com the resemblance was so close that even historians mistakenly lump their film credits together.  It didn't help that Ms Emmett spent quite a few scenes putting around on a scooter, reminiscent of another Wizard of Oz moment:

Mommy, please leave the light on...

Scorecard:  drug use, nudity, alcohol, violence, sex

Six Degrees of Ten Nights in a Barroom: Fern Emmett and Henry Roquemore, Emmett's real life husband

Adults Only! - The Road to Ruin (1934)

The clock chimes midnight, and the projector clatters to life: welcome to the first edition of Adults Only!, a look into some exploitation films of the 1930s and 40s. No ratings - how can you rate these gems? - but insanely fun to watch.



It was so nice, she played it twice: Helen Foster reprises her role from the 1928 version as Ann, a sweet young thing corrupted by sex, drugs, and fast living. The typical cautionary film pattern applies: innocent is lured, by degrees, away from her sanitized lifestyle...eventually to end up sick, injured, eaten by aardvarks, what have you. In poor Ann's case, she dies lamenting her trek down the - you guessed it - Road to Ruin.

As with all warning pictures, you come away thinking "Boy, I really want to be friends with those people!" Probably not what the distributors had in mind. One frustrating thing was the glaring absence of a reel towards the end...though you get enough in context to figure it out for yourself.

Scorecard: drugs, smoking, sex, VD, abortion, alcohol