Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture Vol. 16 (The Cocaine Fiends / The Pace That Kills)

A cocaine-snorting gangster (Noel Madison) lures a small-town waitress (Thelma Daniels) to the big city, where a series of tragedies unfold. When her brother (Dean Benton) attempts to locate her, he falls into his own whirlpool of drugs and moral degradation. The 1928 silent version (The Pace That Kills) was so successful that producer Willis Kent remade it seven years later, and released it under a variety of titles, including The Cocaine Fiends, as it is best known today. Both films are presented here in 4K restorations, from archival 35mm elements preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Library of Congress, and are presented in cooperation with Something Weird and the Sonney Amusement Enterprises Film Collection.

• Audio commentary for The Cocaine Fiends (1935) by Eric Schaefer, author of Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films
• Audio commentary for The Pace That Kills (1928) by film historian Anthony Slide
• The Cocaine Fiends 1973 re-release trailer
• Gallery of exploitation trailers