Cocaine: One Man's Seduction

McCloud ditches stetson and tin flute for funky '80's leather-Jackson-jacket as old Mr Charles begins to burn a hole in his fashion sense as well as pocket. A tour-de-force performance by Dennis Weaver as dead-beat real estate loser Eddie Gant, transformed into a Caddy-driving high-roller thanks to Bolivia's finest export until inevitable excess leads to a pathetic, whimpering finale, a hospitalised Weaver unable to look his family in the eye whilst bubbling, "I'm so ashamed. I'm so ashamed!" Marvelous!

I'm not going to go into details about this film other than to say that some people (myself included) find this film very funny in places...however you will find it *very* hard to find! Its never going to be on TV I would have thought because of the title etc...I'm hoping for a DVD special edition but that's just being silly! To sum up..a couple of people I know who know a fair bit about the subject matter didn't like the film - they seemed uncomfortable, maybe the truth hurts?. Other people I know found it boring. However a select few found it hilarious in places...yes it is a "back from the pub/club film" - if you see it, buy/beg/borrow/steal it! It will interest you to know that this film is endorsed by Nancy Reagan..not my words, the words on the video cover!

You get Dennis Weaver so what can go wrong? Then, a tale of cocaine the one nobody likes to talk about but meets up with eventually once they get started. People don't realize that where coke takes you right away is the high guaranteed and coming off it is uncomfortable and then the addiction and it literally takes from you as it does. How? You will want to return to the land of coke as soon as you leave it. Won't or can't happen to you...you say? Coke begs to differ. I have known people that will lie, cheat, turn irrational and steal to have it until they get it. The Universal law spares no one as follows: Whatever you get into gets into you holds with no exceptions and applies to every subject. It is non-negotiable too. Mind you, getting started its the user that is naive not the drug. It is no respecter of persons. Weaver takes us through the all stages realistically. Make allowances for the generations that handle the addiction stages differently. This film depicts the 80's working class. The Real Estate depictions are hokey (I am a broker) but who is to say that for that time it wasn't the norm? Enjoyable and realistic film worthy of a watch.

David Ackroyd tells Dennis Weaver the same thing that John Kapoles would say to James Woods in THE BOOST... that they need a boost... which means cocaine... and while both that movie and this TV-movie (that came out before) both got bad reviews, they're both, well... very addictive pieces of entertainment...

Watching a hippie get high is like watching a fish swim... but seeing an otherwise conservative Willy "Death of a Salesman" Loman type blasting coke up his nose is always fun to watch, and of course quite rare, and Dennis Weaver, known for playing either tough or frantic roles, kind of balances both here...

His good wife's Karen Grassle, his good son's James Spader, his semi-wild buddy's Jeffrey Tambor and the truly wild office flirt, who introduced him to the dealer to gave him a boost, is Pamela Bellwood, so the cast is sublime...

But what makes this work is the realistic arc into his addiction and how the drug is treated here: first helping his fledgling sales (the best part) until the monkey starts showing, aka, he becomes a scene...

The more Dennis does coke the more he strays from McCloud and morphs into the zany motel worker in Touch of Evil, and overall, whether soberly depressed or high as a kite or crashing like one, does a fantastic job, not overacting like he could have... meaning, he really seems high on coke, not some old actor putting us on.

A real estate salesman (Dennis Weaver) with career and marriage problems gets hooked on cocaine, and finds that not only does it not help him cope with them, but it makes them much, much worse.

What is not to love about this film? We have a young James Spader and a drug-addicted Jeffrey Tambor. That already makes it good no matter what happens. And then we get to learn about the evils of peer pressure! What we end up finding out is that cocaine causes you to make "lewd offers" to your spouse and encourages you to re-arrange your spices. While not an "after school special", it was a made-for-TV movie that was clearly designed to show how cocaine use can spiral out of control.

I have never used cocaine and probably never will. But films like this are not what make me steer clear. In fact, I found this film humorous in a strange way. Not that it was inaccurate -- it is probably very close to the truth. But there is an unintentional humor not unlike that found in "Reefer Madness".