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Dr William Davis (Harry Cording) is a physician who seems to have
everything, a brilliant career, a loving wife (Joan Dix), and he is one of
the most respected citizens in town ... but he is a bit too curious about
the effects of opium, so one day he persuades his Chinese friend Gee Wu
(J.Stuart Blackton jr) to take him to an opium den. Gee Wu, who is against
excessive use of opium, thinks his friend will be able to handle it and
gives in to his demands ... but Davis just can't handle it, and
soon enough he has become addicted to opium. At the same time, his career
goes down the drain, and he becomes a quack selling medicine at sideshows.
Only the love to his wife makes him go to rehab and kick the habit ...
Then though a just recently recovered Doc Davis has an accident when
driving with an opium addict, and in hospital, to ease Davis' pains, he
gets fed with opium like nobody's business - and it's right back to
addiction again.
Soon, Davis' family life is a thing of the past and he mingles with
sideshow lowlives, sluts and addicts just like him ... until he ends a
broken man in a friend's appartment. Reminiscing about his past, he
suddenly realizes there is only one way out - and shoots himself.
By and large, anti-drug films from the 1930's (see Reefer
Madness or Marihuana, Weed with
Roots in Hell) are a funny bunch and great if unintentional
entertainment.
Narcotic unfortunately is an exception to the rule: It's
dead boring !
The melodrama just fails to catch on with the audience, the
storytelling seriously lacks any kind of tension, the actors are uniformly
not up to their task (but not in a funny way), some action scenes lifted
from a silent film (and looking like it) are seriously out of place, and J.Stuart Blackton jr is
quite possibly the fakest Chinaman to ever grace the screen, his
predilection for proverbs only making it worse.
All this might sound fun to connoiseurs of bad cinema (like myself),
but take it from me, Narcotic is a complete waste of time.
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