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Sanders (Dennis and Terry)Subject: Narcotics (1951)

Produced for police orientation and training, this film presents drug addiction not simply as a crime but as a deepseated social problem. With dramatized sequences of addicts in shooting galleries and excellent footage of pre-renewal downtown Los Angeles, a neighborhood now lost. Produced and directed by renowned filmmakers Denis and Terry Sanders, who wrote this film with Jay Sandrich.


This movie is part of the collection: Prelinger Archives

Producer: Sanders (Dennis and Terry)
Sponsor: Anti-Narcotic League of America
Audio/Visual: Sd, C
Keywords: Substance abuse: Drugs; California: Los Angeles; Crime and criminals

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: Pithecanthropus - - January 15, 2012
Subject: No rating
It's hard to say how good something is when whatever good quality it has is largely due to camp.

Beyond that...I have little to say, except that apparently it was customary back then to use butcher's paper when rolling joints.

Reviewer: Dan L. - - November 1, 2009
Subject: Actually well done
For it's time this is actually quite well done. Compared with most stuff I've seen on this topic this isn't overly melodramatic. It's rather realistic actually. Medically and chemically, I believe it has a few errors but it's a frank discussion of the dangers. They discuss marijuana as non addictive and just 'habituating' but not leading to withdrawal for example. Fairly nuanced for that time when all was doom and gloom in these movies. They also accurately depict that it is mild and the problem is really the 'gateway' nature of it. Nuanced again if not exaggerated slightly. While it's true that almost all heavy drug users started out with pot, it is NOT true that all pot users go on to heavy drugs. Some do, most don't. You could also say exactly the same about alcohol or prescription drugs.

And check out the shooting gallery scene! That's the best dressed shooting gallery in history! Looks like a church social is you ask me.

Reviewer: JerryInaPouch - - May 20, 2007
Subject: gotta love the good stuff
These films are great. However being a suboxone user, take it from one that knows- no one "wants" to "become" "this"...

"LOOK AT THOSE MARKS!"

NOT a criminal problem- should be a medical problem. In ENGLAND they allow medical heroin. And guess what? No "stealing" for the "fix". In US? Suboxone (joke, partial agonist,) or- the cell- OR - $100.00 a day, every day, for eternity. Want to know about withdraw and why "those people" do it? Visit my site
wwwDOTmighty-foxDOTcom then click on "Box of Rain"- no ads here, it's the real deal (free). Take care. (no popups, promise- it's a private site) :)

Reviewer: Spuzz - - November 25, 2004
Subject: A couple of goofballs for me please..
Very weird piece about addiction. I think much of this holds up today, well, mayb the slang has changed.. "Goofballs?"

What I liked about this one is the 2 toned narration. You had the serious narrator type, then off and on, this whiny one comes on to ask a stupid question. Very odd, and quite funny.

Shotlist

How to control drug use from the point of view of the police. Very dramatic shots of shooting galleries and drug withdrawal.

Ken Smith sez: Dual narrators banter back and forth as we are shown staged scenes of junkies shooting up and breaking laws in downtown Los Angeles. A grim, dreary and depressing film, created for police officers, and "restricted from the general public and from all youth groups." In color, which is odd. "If a junkie is lucky, he dies early." One of the few pre-sixties educational films that shows Black people.
Stock Shots:
pumping a homemade needle, superimposed over a man in withdrawal and a woman being dragged around by Beverly Hills cops. shooting up; shooting gallery; smoking opium and marijuana; cooking heroin in a spoon; withdrawal; tracks; customs lines at the borders; cutting heroin; rolling a joint; street scenes; shoes; pedestrians;
opiates: demerol, methadone; cocaine; marijuana; plants, seeds; barbiturates; Nembutal; Seconal;
burglar alarm; thief fleeing the scene of a crime; prostitute; jail;

Los Angeles street scenes; newsstands; cops move in on drug bust; chemical testing of narcotics;

Voiceovers:
"He lives from fix to fix and if he is lucky, he dies early, maybe from an overdose, maybe from an infected needle."

"Vice feeds on vice." "Narcotics breed a desperate race of men"



12:15
marijuana is still "a powerful excitant" that produces "unpredictable emotional results"
yellow jackets, red devils, goofballs
"all narcotics have legitimate uses...but in the hands of the addict their use is perverted to secure an escape from reality."
"Five or six puffs. A dream world beckons. But problems aren't solved."
"the pattern of escape is established. The step to narcotic addiction is short."
(19:12 PHOTO smoking a doob)
(20:31 PHOTO shooters gallery)
"Look at those marks!"
"many begin with marijuana and the pattern of escape is established"
"narcotics breed a desperate race of men"
"Need for drugs becomes need for money. No method is too degrading."
(25:24 girl gets the spike PHOTO)
hindered by weak laws" and "apathetic judges and juries"
"the addict, without a will of his own. While under the influence of his drug he acts almost human. Wthout it he becomes a desperate, tortured animal."
"narcotics have weakened his charcter. 99 out of 100 slip back."
"every youngster should be warned of the compelling, habit-forming danger of marijuana."
NARCOTICS COCAINE MARIJUANA OPIUM HEROINE COLD TURKEY HYPODERMICS ADDICTS DRUG PUSHERS COOKING UP SHOOTING POT SMOKING BARBITURATES CUSTOMS BORDER CHECKS MEXICO BURGLARY PROSTITUTION CHEAP HOTELS DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES BUNKER HILL safety danger lurks Drugs
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