Narcotics: Pit of Despair (1967)

This is a scared straight educational film directed at high school teens. John Scott (Kevin Tighe) is a clean cut all-American student. He's under pressure with his academics and his athletics. He runs into old classmate Pete who turns out to be a drug pusher. Of course, the gateway drug is the devil's weed and John is forced to partake due to peer pressure.

Tighe is a Hollywood veteran and it's interesting to see him as a young man doing young acting. This is pure old style anti-drug educational film. It is everything wrong with this type of movies with its old man narration and old world thinking. This is a great example of the pure stuff.

Mental hygiene Classroom Films 1945-1970

"Benefits of looking ahead--Habit patterns--Shy guy--Live and learn--What about juvenile delinquency--Molly grows up--Dating: do's and don't--Narcotics: pit of despair."

This is a compilation of America's social guidance films, 10-minute celluloid treatises on proper dating, good table manners, the evils of dope, and what happens to teens who drive too fast on prom night. Thousands of classroom films were made between 1945 and 1970 and seen by millions of American baby boomers."

The nice kid who turns junkie in "Narcotics: pit of despair." is Kevin Tighe from EMERGENCY! (Paramedic Roy DeSoto)

Fairly good educational short showing the evils of drug addiction. It's all narrated--you never hear the actors peak.

It deals with high school student John Scott who's failing academically and is worried that his low marks will have him kicked off the track team. Then he meets former schoolmate Pete who (unknown to John) has spent some time in jail for pushing drugs. Pete sees a new victim in John. He invites him to party and gets him started on the path of addiction. He buys the drugs for him and soon John is an addict. Then Pete stops buying the drugs for John and John must do anything to pay for them.

It's fairly tame by today's standards and a little dated but still works. There's a genuinely harrowing sequence where we see John going through withdrawal and we see another addict shooting up. Surprisingly the happy ending you expect doesn't happen. It's a realistic ending but a downer. Well-made and interesting.

The grainy 16-mm print only adds to the raw starkness of this powerful narrated educational film that was shown to schoolkids from 1967 through about 1970. Considered "dated" by contemporary standards, although some very graphic and disturbing scenes can still make one grimace even today. One especially stomach-turning scene of the young heroin addict played by Kevin Tighe rolling in withdrawal agony on a dirty bed in a squalid room. This extremely obscure movie, although dated, should still be shown in schools today, in this author's opinion. Four Stars.

Narcotics: Pit of Despair is an overall typical late 60s era anti-drug piece with a few genuinely moving scenes. It features a typical hard sell drug dealer who lures a clean cut young man into a world of addiction.

The main problem with films such as this is that their depiction of drug dealers is completely misleading, leading young viewers to expect rather obvious fast talking con men, when the actual gateway to drugs could be their friends. The depiction is so inaccurate as to be laugh inducing.

However, the film does benefit from a truly grueling scene of heroin withdrawal. Had the rest of the film been up to this level, it might actually have been effective.