User Reviews

Worth seeing for Virginia Roye, who (admittedly aided by skillful make-up) gives a marvelously shattering performance as the shopgirl who introduces our innocent hero, Eddie Bradley (well played by Owen Gorin), to drugs. Miss Roye made only four films. She had inconsequential roles in two shorts and then played the second female lead in "The Road to Ruin". In this one, she is most certainly the female lead, even though Thelma Daniels (in a small role as the rustic hero's backwoods love) is billed second to Owen Gorin's farm boy who is led astray by Virginia Roye's city-smart Fanny O'Reilly. Then comes Florence Turner in a now-you-see-her-now-you-don't part as Eddie's anxious but not over-bright mum. Florence Dudley is listed next. She plays the hero's sister. We catch exactly two glimpses of her, and that's that! Harry Todd, whom I don't remember at all, his part is so small, is next in the billing. Then comes Arnold Dallas in a nothing role as Handsome Nick, king of the underworld. The actor who plays the part of the streetwise dope peddler is not billed at all, even though he is not only most convincing in the role but adds little touches of business which I'm sure were his own inventions. Except for Virginia Roye, nobody else adds anything extra to their roles! And then finally, Virginia Roye, who has actually more screen time than any other character except maybe our brainless, easily-led-astray hero, played by Owen Gorin. (I'm talking, of course, of the Kodascope version of the film, not of the original seven-reel theatrical release. The 16mm five-reel Kodascope cutdown runs 64 minutes and is now available on a very good DVD from Grapevine Video).

First feature of Willis Kent Productions which specialized in crime and chillers - the type of genre craved by the cinema going audiences of the early 30s. What elevates this movie above the exploitation grind is the stunning cinematography of Ernest Laszlo, his first film but he went on to create some dazzling camera-work for "Judgement at Nuremburg"(1960) and "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955). Also Virginia Roye looking like a young Joan Crawford who excels in the role of Fanny, initially a sassy flapper but drugs and the getting of them reduce her to "the world's oldest profession"!! She should have gone on to other things but this was her last and biggest role!!

After a very high minded lecture (via titles) the film starts down at the farm as Eddie's (Owen Gorin) halcyon days are soon to end. His mother (Florence Turner, the only name in the movie) has found a place for him in a city firm but it's just an excuse to have him look for his missing sister, Grace, who hasn't been heard of since she hit the big smoke (city)!!

All fingers and thumbs in the Ladies Underwear Wrapping and Fitting Dept. gets the country boy noticed by flirty Fannie who introduces him to a new type of "headache powder" to sooth his nerves and homesickness!! Soon his headaches are forgotten, he wants to see some big city life and finding his sister is put into the too hard basket!! Unfortunately he runs into her in a night club - she is now the girl of Handsome Nick, a notorious gangster and doesn't want to know Eddie - telling the hick to go back to the country where he belongs!! By now Eddie is in his own hell - both he and Fanny have been sacked for petty thievery and as the titles(and their make up) show, they have descended from "snow" (cocaine), "the needle" (heroin and morphine) to "the black smoke" (opium). Once again Roye has the heaviest dramatics and she handles them with ability (not just looks and stares)!!

For all her second billing as Mary Jane, Thelma Daniels is left back at the farm - with Eddie and Fanny whooping it up in the city. When all the fun has evaporated, Eddie yearns more and more for his simpler, earlier life with Mary Jane until Fanny, probably the nicest person in the movie, decides to do the decent thing.

This movie seemed to be the "kiss of death" to careers - Owen Gorin was a German actor who had had a reasonable career in Germany - this proved his last movie!! And Florence Dudley who had the role of Eddie's sister Grace, apart from a proper role as Miss Manning in "Party Girl" (1930), spent her career in bits, usually as "gangster's moll" or "sailor's girlfriend"!!

Highly Recommended.

THE PACE THAT KILLS is your typical anti-drug film from the 20's, it shows the evils of the big city that are always insidiously corrupting good old rural farmboys in all ways imaginable. The story consists of a good 'ol farmboy (Eddie) who moves to the big city and meets a co-worker at his new found job (named Fanny), Fanny gives him some of that wowee zowee white powder to cure his headache. Eddie and Fanny get fired for being higher than a kite on a clear Kansas sky. Soon Cocaine is not enough for Eddie and Fanny so they start doing morphine, opium, and if that's not enough Heroin!! SPOILER ALERT So, Eddie then finds his long lost sister in a opium den, tries to take her home, narrowly gets busted by the fuzz, then finds out Fanny killed herself because she was pregnant with his kid, so what does he do...he kills himself, and then a final title card says "how many mothers-how many sweethearts are waiting for the boys who will never come home?" well since urban centers are always shown to be evil in these anti-drug films, the answer is simple KEEP HIM AT HOME!

It is interesting to see that this film portrayed Cocaine as a stepping stone for more harsher drugs, (instead of showing Marijuana being the classical beginner drug) since cocaine is already pretty high up there on the harshness scale for narcotics. Also interesting enough Willis Kent the movie maker re-made this exact film in the 30's as a talkie (Cocaine Fiends 1935).