Tonight's Saturday Night Special is all about choices!
Choices, choices, choices!!! To be a junkie, or not to be a junkie, that is the question! What's a person supposed to do?
"One Way Ticket To Hell," also fondly remembered as "Teenage Devil Dolls," is a miserable story! Miserable, I think that's a very good description! No wonder we've got such a drug problem today if this is the way it was 66 years ago. Moving forward into the future is supposedly called progress, but I think that time is moving backwards as far as progress in heroin abuse and society is concerned!
"Teenage Devil Dolls" is a quasi-documentary about the downfall of a young woman caused mostly by drug abuse! There is no dialogue, just sound effects, music, and a narration by this guy, Lt. David Jason as played by Robert A. Sherry but, Robert A. Sherry is just the actor, another fellow named Kurt Martell is doing the actual talking!
"One Way Ticket To Hell" starts at the end. This guy, Bamlet Lawrence Price Jr. is a no good troublemaker named Miguel 'Cholo' Martinez, and he's skulking around trying to get his girlfriend back! Bamlet was born in Tulare County, California, not a town, but a county, and not only plays this part, he also wrote, directed, edited, and produced this film! I guess I must have lead a sheltered life, because I grew up in the same Central Valley, and I never knew anything about drugs until 1967, some twelve years later! Beer was our drug of choice!
The trouble all starts with motorcycles, and the lure of the wind blowing between your ears, and then it just escalates from there! Bottom line, motorcycles are the real gateway drug!
After motorcycles, it's the herbs grown in the Devil's Garden, Marijuana!
Barbara Marks is Cassandra Leigh, a girl with nothing but problems! This might have been Barbara's only acting credit, but she worked in the Editorial Department on "The Godfather," and "Apocalypse Now!"
After marijuana comes marrying a guy who is in love with you just so you can escape your dreadful home life!
But that doesn't work because Cassandra is not meant to be doing cooking and cleaning!
Her sole purpose in life is to get high!
After motorcycles, pot, and a shitty marriage, what could be next?
That's right, booze!
The next step is over the counter drugs. Because she has problems sleeping, Cassandra gets a prescription for Seconal that she fills seven times more than she is supposed to in only one week!
With a loving family like this, why would anybody turn to drugs?
I just threw in this shot because I like it!
Cassandra leaves her husband, and gets a job as a carhop, and while she's delivering the food, some customers get the extra bonus of some weed brought to their cars too!
Cassandra is a mess!!
Cassandra makes a friend, somebody she can finally relate to!
Cassandra and her new best friend Margo take up selling marijuana on the street. Elaine Lindenbaum is Margo, and this is her only acting credit. They are popular merchants because all the potheads think it's cool that two chicks are dealing. Unfortunately it also draws the attention of the authorities and other street vendors, and everything starts unraveling, and going to Hell really fast from here!
The cops aren't playing around! They chase Cassandra and Cholo into the desert where they almost die, and she is finally captured and taken off to rehab again, and believe it or not, Cholo gets away, and only eventually gets caught because of what he's doing at the beginning of the film, wanting to get Cassandra back!
Yep, lots of bad choices!
You can download or watch "Teenage Devil Doll" at the Internet Archive, or if you just want to get a quick fix, the whole thing can be watched on YouTube!
2 comments:
Figures I'd be the one to float in and comment on this film.
It was made by Bamlet Lawrence Price, Jr. in 1953, when he was married to a young actress-on-the-way-up named...(wait for it) ANNE FRANCIS, who financed this student film of Mr. Price, her husband at the time.
His film career never quite took off, hr acting career zoomed to Altair 4, so they split, and the rest is history, er, HER-story. Or sumpin' like dat.
Speaking of filmmakers who never made it, back to my own one-man-crew, "student film project" which am set to premiere in early December 2018.
Love the Anne Francis info KD. We'll be looking forward to seeing your latest project!
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