HOOKED aka Curfew Breakers (1958) скачать в хорошем качестве

HOOKED aka Curfew Breakers (1958)

"Organized narcotics traffic is big business, and to get to the top, you've got to go to the bottom!" says sourpuss Lt. Lacey (a particularly dour, soon-to-be-dead PAUL KELLY) in this wonderfully lurid cross between a JD flick, Reefer Madness, and Dragnet from the pre-rock-'n'-roll be-bob bleakness of the 1950s, in which the search for a teenage junkie uncovers a small town festering with high-school hipsters eager to get HOOKED. 17-year-old Ray Bowman is missing and coach REGIS TOOMEY thinks the kid may be on dope. Ray's aunt (CATHY DOWNS) pooh-poohs the idea — why Ray's just involved in nothing more than "boyish shenanigans"— but Bowman's "a confirmed heroin addict" alright, who finally shows up at a local juke joint looking for a fix. Ignoring the oddball band (which includes an especially berserk rubber-mouthed saxophone player who makes grotesque faces in closeup) and a lanky beatnik-like babe who warbles a simple but haunting tune ("Baby, baby, baby, have yourself a tiiiiiime...."), Bowman begs Jimmy, a 21-year-old hot shot pusher in suit and tie, for some H on credit. Bad move, for Bowman, is found a short time later dead of a "hot shot" with Lacey providing his epitaph: "Whatever way you take it, dope is murder!" Lacey quickly sends two undercover cops into the field — including MARILYN MADISON who works as a carhop — to zero in on Jimmy and his sexy, thrill-seeking underage girlfriend Julie Barnes (SHEILA URBAN) who wants to introduce super-square grade-A student Dick Williams to her "friends from the east side." Finally, after two particularly great montages — one of a sick, screaming teenage addict going through the hell of cold turkey behind cold prison bars; the other of "pain-crazed dope-starved addicts" selling whatever they can for quick cash — a sting is set up where another cop (ALEXANDER WELLS, who also directed and looks a bit like Robert Clarke) poses as a "joypopper" to get the goods on Jimmy. But in a film which tries so hard to shock with scenes of high schoolers committing crimes and desperately seeking drugs, the single most jaw-dropping moment occurs when "jailbait Julie"... suddenly turns good! Originally released as NARCOTICS SQUAD, Something Weird used to offer a transfer from a 16mm print under the marvelously inappropriate re-release title CURFEW BREAKERS. But when we were able to make a new digital master from a beautiful 35mm theatrical-release print— under a second but more-to-the-point re-release moniker — we were so happy, we almost got high. And remember, kids: "As long as one innocent person — man, woman, or child — is exposed to the horror of dope enslavement, a silent killer lurks in our midst, and the end of this story will remain yet to be written!"