Assassin of Youth

Once you get past the anti-marijuana propaganda of this film, just look at it for what it really is, a soap opera. This film could have made a great one. The story about how one cousin wants to ruin another cousin's chance at her rightful inheritance by accusing her of bad morals comes right out of "Guiding Light". The one thing that really stood out was the town gossip. As another person commented, she reminded me of Margaret Hamilton's character of Miss Gulch. Talk about wicked witches, this woman took the cake.

One does not view poverty row pictures and road show exploitation flicks with the expectation of witnessing fine acting, directing or writing--after all, that's the charm. The relative inexperience or stiffness of performances allows the modern movie-goer to concentrate on the dated situations and propaganda--both of which offer a clearer window to the cultural mores of the era than acknowledged works of classic cinema: pop culture has always been more visceral than what we choose to elevate as high art. This film is enjoyable on several levels--as a societal time machine, a "campy" exploitation flick, and even as a basic B movie romance/courtroom drama! Quirky details abound--the town gossip bears a striking resemblance in face and deed to Margaret Hamilton's "Miss Gulch", for example, though she rides a scooter instead of a bicycle/broom! And of course, the drug references to insanity-inducing marijuana go a long way in explaining why the tobacco industry has had such a long stranglehold on American lungs... Watch "Assassin of Youth"--you'll triple your entertainment without the use of mood enhancers!

Just like many young people, a group of teenage friends enjoy a partying lifestyle, drinking, dancing and smoking weed. However, the devil of the drug starts as a bit of fun but soon they are living the consequences. During a night of partying that leads them to naked frolicking on the beach, one girl drowns while another ends up pregnant from a moment of casual sex. The pregnant girl gives up her baby as unwanted and continues her lifestyle, getting into harder drugs and getting more and more into the world of her dealer.

Unlike many other viewers on this site, I did not deliberately turn to this film to have ironic laughs at it but more out of interest. I had seen clips of this film played in modern documentaries (Grass for example) and easily derided and, in fairness, it is easy to do because they are dated and rather corny but just to watch it with an agenda to mock it is to do the film (and yourself) a disservice. It is easy to forget that this was one of many attempts to control drug use in the 1930's, the Government turned to movies as part of trying to educate the public. Looking at it now of course, the film is pretty extreme in its depiction of the consequences– it does show the vague good side of drugs, the feelings that it gives you etc but it makes the partying out as a bad thing and ignores that the consequences for every user will not be as extreme as this film tries to portray as the norm for even an one-time casual user; like Bill Hicks said 'never robbed nobody, never shot nobody, never lost one single job. Laughed my *ss off, and went about my day' (I'm paraphrasing).

In terms of its value as a film, it is of course pretty weak. The direction is OK but the production values are low even for the period; some shots are really badly lit, the film crackles and jumps around a lot due to frequent dropped frames and the soundtrack cuts in and out quite badly. The acting is also only average; it would be easy to criticise the actors for how quickly they take their characters from clean cut down to junkies but that is not their fault – they were only doing what they were told and I did think that they did do an OK job. Let's not forget that this is not a movie – it is an educational film and even today the production values and acting within educational films is still pretty dire; the last one I was a short film on confined space entry with William Shatner – hardly a piece of art!

Whether or not you agree, I have seen some of this type of film that actually do show the appeal of drugs in a reasonable fashion (The Pace That Kills did OK I felt) but this one is just far too one sided. The nearest it gets to actual thought is to begrudgingly admit that the kids have a good time, but that's it, no other though as to the reasons or the appeal and it obviously ignores the fact that bad things won't always happen. The film is clearly aimed at parents more than children because I can't imagine many teenage boys watching a group of girls get naked and being very open to ideas, who would say 'parties with naked girls? Nope – not for me thank you'! If I had been told that weed brought you into this sort of party then I would have started puffing a lot sooner than I did – all it does for me is make me sleepy, hungry and laugh, with rarely a naked 19 year old girl anywhere to be seen.

It does what it intends to do – scare without anything in the way of actual information and in doing this it damages whatever good it could have done. I'm sure that even in the 1930's people looked at this and saw it as a very one-sided morality piece as opposed to an educational film. Imagine doing one about alcohol and suggesting that even one drink (not intentionally excessive drinking) would lead you to bar fights, unemployment, broken marriages and homelessness! This is not to ignore the fact that drinking can destroy lives (or even nights out) but to pretend that it is not generally OK would damage your case and it is the same here. It comes across as moral hand wringing and, even though its intentions and aims are good it just becomes heavy handed and really poor both as a film and a piece of social education.

Overall, this is not a good film by any stretch of the imagination, but if you only watch it to get ironic laughs while you smoke some puff then you are not giving it a chance or meeting it on its own ground – that of the mid-thirties. The production is average at best – poor lighting, a poor script, simplistic characters and a real biased spin to the story and, by being so blindly one-sided, it damages its value both at the time and now. A cheap, terrible film – but I could have forgiven it that if it had had educational value and had done some good – it didn't.

I liked this movie. I see it more as a soap opera than as an anti-marijuana film -- the plot about the battling cousins and the secret marriage is solid soap opera fare. A highlight for me was seeing Fern Emmett on a motor scooter! WOW! A lot of folks call her "that Margaret Hamilton looking lady" -- and the two women are similar in appearance, without a doubt -- but Emmett has her own odd way about her, and the repeated scenes of her scootering down main street and spreading gossip were hilarious. Also fun was Western actor Earl Dwire as Pop Hardy, playing checkers. Quite a character! Best of all, the comic bits had a plot-worthy pay-off, too, for in the end it became obvious that many of the older folks in the small town had themselves made juvenile errors of judgement -- so the fact that "today's" youth were going astray with drugs was nicely undercut by the revelations about the oldsters' own young years.

What a disappointment for peek-show fans. The best this exploitation flick could manage is a couple hiked up skirts and a bout of implied nudity. Big deal. I could get as much from old I Love Lucy skits. And what about the hysterical effects of the demon weed. The best they could do here is roll around the floor like a bunch of happy worms. Even the acting from the main actors is too good to be laughable. Actually the best part is gossipy old lady Henrietta zooming out of her drive-way on a gas belching putt-putt, like some Hell's Angel on training wheels. Oh sure, there's some of what you'd treasure from these goofy films—bad acting, worse dialogue, and uptight moralizing, but basically the production is too good to be good.