One Way Ticket to Hell (1955) User Reviews

It's bad...but consider the context.

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 21 February 2010]

I think that making fun of this film or simply dismissing it is a big mistake. Sure, it doesn't seem like a very good film when you watch it. However, when you realize that the film maker made this for his masters thesis and only spent about $14,000 making it, it's actually a commendable film. After all, despite its cheesiness, the film is watchable and surprisingly good.

The biggest deficiency was surely due to the cheap equipment employed for the film. I assume 8 or 16mm cameras were used. And, the equipment did not include sound recording! So, the entire film is narrated in a Jack Webb-style and sound effects were later added. Actually, the quality and integration of the sound effects were pretty good. The biggest deficiency was the rather cheesy soundtrack--simple sax or flute music and the like.

The story is about a young lady whose life is a mess. The film begins after she's a heroin addict with a record and backtracks to the many steps she took leading to this horrible life. The story is supposedly told by a narcotics officer who talks about this criminal and his many contacts with her. It's all clearly meant to shock audiences and is one of the countless anti-drug educational films of the era--most of which were pretty poorly made.

On the plus side, most of the drug information in the film is good and the equipment and lifestyle are reasonably well represented. The low quality of the production and cheese-factor, though, will probably make many laugh at it today. Just remember, though, it originally was NOT intended as a feature film and was made by an inexperienced film maker and non-professional actors. So don't be too hard on it.

One Way Ticket to Hilarity!

[zardoz-13 · 3/10 · 11 October 2008]

You know that a movie is in serious trouble when it shuns dialogue entirely and relies strictly on narration. Writer & director Bamlet Lawrence Price Jr.'s "One Way Ticket to Hell," is a stark-looking, black & white, pseudo-documentary about the evils of substance abuse. This film depicts the deleterious effects of marihuana, heroin, and prescription sleep aids, namely Seconal, on a juvenile delinquent, Cassandra Leigh (Barbara Marks), who charts her descent into addiction when she chooses to hang out with the cleanest looking gang of teenagers that you've ever seen on motorcycles. Indeed, the top cop on the case, City Detective Lieutenant David Jason (Robert A. Sherry) of the Narcotics Bureau, attributes motorcycles as the key factor that lead to Cassandra's heroin addiction. After he establishes Cassandra's horrendous problem, writer & director Price relates the remainder of this yarn in flashback, and then comes full circle back at the end. The story of Cassandra's addiction is pretty compelling stuff and the twists & turns are amazingly credible. There is nothing contrived about her story, but Price's approach is contrived itself and undermines the narrative.

Basically, Price links Cassandra's history of narcotic abuse with her callous, irresponsible parents. Everything goes wrong in Cassandra's life. Her mother keeps getting divorces and the stepfathers in Cassandra's life alienate her. Mom tried to keep her daughter on a tight leash, Cassandra cannot tolerate this tyrannical rule and she hits the road to ruin with a motorcycle gang. Initially, Cassandra refuses to puff pot with her biking buddies. Later, when she realizes that they won't trust her, she capitulates and starts puffing.

"Teenage Devil Dolls" appropriates the standard-issue anti-narcotics propaganda that categorizes marihuana as the gateway drug that leads to harder stuff, namely heroin. Since her mother neglected to establish a stable home life, Cassandra searches happiness on her own and fails miserably. Later, she makes the mistake of marrying a nice guy, Johnny Adams (Robert Norman), who doesn't use narcotics, but he is a complete imbecile in every sense of the word. When the boredom of domesticity—she cannot handle hanging out the laundry to dry--drives Cassandra around the bend, she starts forging prescriptions for Seconal. Johnny's solution to Cassandra's problem is getting her a pet pooch to keep the poor girl occupied while he is at work. The real problem is that Cassandra's addiction prevents her from having the emotional maturity to be a responsible wife.

Cassandra's condition worsens. Greater evils crop up. Not only does Cassandra have to contend with the drug dealers, but she also is her own worst enemy because she gets high on their supply. The dealers tolerate this for only so long and then when Cassandra finds herself back in police custody, she is sent to inadequate facilities to keep her under lock and key. Eventually, the press launches a crusade on drugs and the cops start rounding up and arresting drug dealers and this makes the predicament of the junkies all the more damaging. Several scenes show these unfortunate junkies suffering from narcotic withdrawal. Eventually, Cassandra hooks up with Martinez. Martinez steals a car and plans to sell it in Mexico for heroin and he takes Cassandra with him. In one of the more interesting moments of the film, the authorities thwart them during a desert manhunt. Once they round up Cassandra, the authorities pack her pff by train to a Federal Narcotics Hospital where she will receive treatment that may cure her.

As a time capsule, "Teenage Devil Dolls" ranks as either completely hilarious for today's sophisticated audiences or marginally gripping for audiences analyzing the efforts of drug propaganda advocates from 1955. Not surprisingly, Kurt Martell who provides the voice of L.A.P.D. Narcotics Investigator Lieutenant David Jason as well as the histrionic narration appeared in four of Jack Webb's immortal "Dragnet" episodes. Sadly, Martell's narration is so grim and wooden that it is sleep inducing. Wisely, Barbara Marks swore off acting and went behind the cameras to work as an editor. "Teenage Devil Dolls" belongs to the category of so-bad-they're-awful drug scare movies like "Reefer Madness," "Cocaine Fiends," and "Marihuana." Interestingly, the villain-- Miguel 'Cholo' Martinez—is played by none other than Price, while Price's pop plays Cassandra's step-father.

Teenage Devil Dolls

[Uriah43 · 3/10 · 24 May 2015]

"Cassandra Leigh" (Barbara Marks) is a young high school senior who makes good grades but feels suffocated at home by her domineering mother. One day while at work she meets a small group of motorcyclists and decides to start hanging out with them. One thing leads to another and soon she begins devoting more and more time smoking marijuana with her new friends while spending less time with her family and former friends. She also begins neglecting her homework which results in her grades dropping to such a significant degree that she is no longer eligible for entry into a college. With few other choices available she decides to marry her high school boyfriend but then finds life so meaningless that she soon gravitates to drugs. It's at this time that her life spirals out of control. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that I thought the underlying story was quite interesting. Unfortunately, the method of using a narrative style--instead of having the actors speaking their lines--really hurt the overall entertainment value of the film. As a matter of fact, this technique almost made it seem more like a documentary than a movie. Again, it had an interesting plot but all things considered I have to rate this movie as below average.

One girl's Road To Ruin, rock-bottom cheap fifties style.

[otter · 24 April 1999]

Classically bad fifties cheapo, there's not even any dialogue! Either some genius lost the sound a la "The Creeping Terror", or the budget was so low that it was shot as a silent film. There is no sound but the heavy-handed narration, some stock music, and some really bad Foley effects that don't match the action on screen at all (cops run across the sandy desert and their footsteps echo).

It's about this girl who Goes Wrong; she goes from high school bad girl to tranquilized housewife, to dealer, to junkie, to hardened thief, all because she went for a motorcycle ride with some bad kids! Take heed, discontented teenagers!

Since it's all about the dangers of drugs there are about 20 different writhing-on-the-ground scenes, most of them hysterically funny. Whether it's star Barbara Marks rolling around her nice suburban yard looking for another seconal, or a series of surprisingly clean, well-dressed junkies going through withdrawl to the "Twilight Zone" sound, you can't help but laugh at the clueless, silent overacting.

A classic among bad movies.

Taking a "trip" down memory lane, and that voyage is no valley of the dolls.

[mark.waltz · 2/10 · 11 July 2018]

I must admit that I got quickly hooked, like heroine abuser Barbara Marks does here, on the way this docudrama is told as Marks goes from troubled young school girl hanging out with a motorcycle gang and on occasion smoking pot to a full fledged gangster's moll on the run, desperately searching for her next fix. Bamlet Lawrence Price Jr. is the young man responsible for this film, having written and directed and co-starred in it, casting his parents, and trying to sell the evils of the drug counter culture as he attempted to break into the world of movie making. As his film resume shows, that never came to pass, but what results here is a noble attempt to tell a story, documentary style, and send a message of the evils of the world of drugs. Other than a few screeches or gasps, the actors here never speak, and only Kurt Martell's voice is heard as a narcotics cop involved in the case of the young woman he follows throughout the film to bring both to justice and to sobriety.

As the film starts, Marks and her parents (played by Price's parents) are being escorted by Martell to Union Station in L.A., either to be taken to a dry out ward or to go to court. Price Jr. is seen in the background as a Mexican thug who only shows up in the last half, with the first half showing Marks going from the motorcycle gang to unhappy wife to drug seller as a car hop waitress. This does not seem to have been meant for theatrical release, but somebody who saw it must have thought it important in the world of teenage angst of the 1950's to be shown in theaters. It is cheaply done and some of the situations are presented in rather ridiculous ways, but something about it does command your attention. Elaine Lindenbaum, as an aging heroine addict, reminded me of Anna Magnani, and her footage is unforgettable. There's no comparing this to the 1930's anti-marijuana films "Marijuana" or "Reefer Madness", as this never shows the wacky trips of those using the drugs, but there are some elements that bring on unintentional laughter such as the abundance of drug users going through withdrawal when the supply of the various drugs they are addicted to runs out or is unavailable due to the absence of the pushers. This goes both into the bowels of the L.A. drug counter culture and deep into the wastelands of Baja California north of the Mexican border. Even if you excuse the cheapness of the film, there is just far too much going on with far too many characters, but that does go to show the complexity of an ugly world where sometimes the only way to get off is death.

This is sad

[xring-51632 · 2/10 · 12 February 2020]

To movie is so bad that most of the actors are only in this one film.

Drug addiction isn't funny...

[Flixer1957 · 2/10 · 19 January 2002]

**Possible spoilers ahead**

Another black-and-white drug scare flick that belongs on the same shelf (or in the same wastebasket) as REEFER MADNESS and COCAINE FIENDS. With confusing flashbacks-within-flashbacks, this howler tells the sad story of a schoolgirl (Barbara Marks) who smokes some of that evil weed, drops out of school, gets hooked on Seconal, deserts her new husband, gets hooked on heroin, etc. The actors never talk so instead of dorky dialogue we get to hear a monotonous monologue. Narrator Kurt Marter only comes to life when he spouts such nonsense as "Addicts have a strange code of ethics!" The opening theme music is bad enough to have been composed by Herschell Gordon Lewis and the rest, incredibly, is worse. A monkey with a tin ear could have done better. Marks later worked as an editor on another clunker, Albert Brooks' LOST IN AMERICA. Drug addiction isn't funny but some of the movies it's spawned over the years have been a real scream. I hope Ed Wood Jr. found 58 free minutes during his troubled life to watch TEENAGE DEVIL DOLLS. He probably would have considered it a masterpiece.

One drag will drag you down.

[michaelRokeefe · 4/10 · 30 June 2015]

This is a teenage exploitative flick about a decent girl going bad. Cassandra Leigh(Barbara Marks)is a good girl easily tempted by her peers and takes a short walk on the wilder side. She is encouraged to take just one drag off a marijuana cigarette and that leads to the slippery slope of popping pills. Cassandra then gets her introduction to heroin and the old bugaboo has bitten...this good girl is now a drug addict having hellish nightmares. Her life becomes a battle looking for what she craves, getting "high".

This low-budget melodrama has a serious subject: drug abuse. But then it is kind of funny when it comes to dialogue and filming techniques. But after all, this is the mid fifties.

Bamlet Lawrence Price Jr. writes, directs and stars as 'Chico' Martinez. Also in the cast: William Kendall, Robert A. Sherry, Robert Norman, Elaine Linderbaum and Bamlet Lawrence Price Sr.

the single worst movie

[rcashner · 1/10 · 30 December 2003]

If you want a good laugh, then you will need to watch, or, at least, attempt to watch this movie. The narration, the dialog, the music score and the film editing are examples of the worst of the worst that Hollywood can or did offer.

For 1955, maybe this was strong stuff, but today, it stinks

[scsu1975 · 2/10 · 24 November 2022]

The film revolves around the character of Cassandra, a teen who gets mixed up with a bunch of bikers who smoke reefers. Most of the bikers look like nerds, and, of course, everyone knows that nerds smoke grass every chance they can. (I started, immediately after viewing this film.) Somehow, Cassandra manages to marry a decent boy named Johnny Adams, but can't stay away from the weed and the bikes. Despite Johnny getting her a dog and her doctor giving her sleeping pills (nice move, Doc - your name ain't Kevorkian, is it?), she falls deeper into the dumper. In several scenes, she crawls along the ground, impersonating David Hasselhoff sans the hamburger. Eventually, she hooks up with a chubby heroin addict, various sundry sordid characters, and finally, a Latin American junkie, played by director Price. Price gives the best performance in the film, which isn't saying much. Price's father, oddly enough named B. Lawrence Price, Sr., appears in the film as Cassandra's stepfather. The Johnny character simply disappears from the film, as well as the dog.

There is no dialogue, just narration by "Lt. David Jason." This puts the film on a par with "The Beast of Yucca Flats," but at least Beast had Tor Johnson around for laughs.

The film is basically a one-hour documentary, not nearly as entertaining as those 1950s educational films which tell you to avoid restrooms along the highways, what to do on a first date, how to practice good hygiene, and how to kiss your butt goodbye when the commies bomb us.

100% Entertainment!!!

[Ray-26 · 10/10 · 25 April 1999]

Based on entertainment alone, I have to give this a 10! It was so refreshingly...different. Different than now. Like a lot! So serious...hilarious!

A choice chunk of campy crud

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 26 November 2013]

Troubled teen Cassandra (pretty Barbara Meeks) has her life turned topsy turvy after she hooks up with a group of delinquent bikers and starts smoking weed, which eventually leads to poor Cassandra degenerating into a destitute strung-out smack addict. Boy, does this gloriously ghastly celluloid bilge possess all the right wrong stuff to qualify as a special kind of unintentionally sidesplitting stinker: Ham-fisted (mis)direction by Bamlet Lawrence Price Jr. (who also wrote the histrionic script), incessant, long-winded, and redundant sub-"Dragnet" style narration from a cynical police detective, uproariously dubious "facts" (bet you didn't know that toking on reefers is a road to absolute ruin that ultimately begets addiction to much harder and more dangerous narcotics like heroin!), overwrought acting, seedy black and white cinematography, and a ridiculously clean-cut bunch of bikers who resemble a preppyish high school honor society. Single most funny moment: Cassandra writhing about on her front lawn while tripping on goofballs. Only a few authentically grubby Los Angeles locations add a faint touch of gritty realism to this otherwise laughably absurd tripe. Only an hour long, this honey zips by at a brisk pace and doesn't outstay its welcome. An absolute kitschy hoot.

One of the Best Worst

[BonzoDog · 26 April 1999]

This silly "juvenile delinquent" film is fun for a lot of reasons: there is NO dialogue, only flat narration; the female teenage lead looks like a hardened 40 year old; the narrator's analysis of psychological problems is a hoot; and the motorcycle gang looks like a troupe of Cub Scouts. Good stuff!

An artistic telling akin to the quality of Shakespeare

[bletcherstonerson · 9/10 · 3 September 2016]

This reviewer subtracted 1 mark from the rating preventing a perfect 10 due to the fact the running time is only 59 minutes. This story is deftly crafted with artistic nuance. As the film starts the viewer will see that the main character is being played by a an actress with skills that only could have been attained at London's Royal Theater. The actress selection was done so to utilize the talents of a woman in her 30's to play a young girl 14 years of age, this was implemented for the purpose that only a highly skilled actress could meet the role's emotional and psychological demands. This riveting urban epic starts with our heroine falling in love and wanting more than the everyday modicum of societal expectations. She sees another path, the road heavily traveled, the road not taken, and her road, the road closed for construction. After dropping out from school, because who needs to learn math or science when the mystery of life awaits you. She starts a period of experimentation with altering her perception, she realizes this is the permanent state of existence she wants for herself. When she no longer can support that style of life, she decides to live the American Dream and open a small business with plans of greatness and opportunity. Once in business she realizes that she will need to have help and her business suffers growing pains. Then as in life when all doors shut, a window of opportunity opens and she enlists the help of some nice chaps who are motorcycle enthusiasts. What is a great story without tragedy?

In the end she finds that the world isn't ready for her dreams and she is arrested for breaking the norms of society, but then is forgiven when she promises to conform to societies wishes and at the end she is reunited with her family. Now others may see this movie as just a story of a young girl with a lousy boyfriend who whores herself off for drugs, becomes a junkie and then ends up as saddle trash for a bike gang all told in an ABC after school special format, but I see a story of the every woman and the soul of the "Feminine American Experience." Not for shirkers, you really have to work to make it through this film, but only great things come from hard work.

Really Awful Movie

[Michael_Elliott · 8 January 2018]

One Way Ticket to Hell (1955)

BOMB (out of 4)

Cassandra (Barbara Marks) was once a sweet, innocent little girl but sadly she was raised by a mother who jumped from man to man. Eventually Cassandra starts dating a biker, which leads her to trying marijuana for the first time. Pretty soon she's a strung out heroin addict but can anyone save her life?

According to the IMDB, the director Bamlet Lawrence Price Jr. shot this for $14,000 while attending UCLA. This was his Master's thesis film and I should mention a student film. With that said, I love the "drug" genre that this film is trying to be a part of. With that said, movies like REEFER MADNESS and others were awful films that were thankfully so bad that you could laugh at them.

Sadly, ONE WAY TICKET TO HELL isn't so bad it's good. Instead it's just downright awful on every level and even though I understand the conditions that it was made, it's still impossible to find anything nice to say about the picture. Like a lot of movies from this period, it's told via narration ike you'd see during an episode of Dragnet. The problem is that there's nothing interesting beign said to us and even worse is the actual lead character.

I'm not sure what the director was going for but she's such an unlikeable character that you just don't care whether she lives or dies. You don't care about the people around here and there's just nothing here to connect with. The entire film comes in at just 58-minutes and it honestly felt ten times that. The film was really hard to make it through as you're smacked in the face with one bad scene after another.

This is a spoiler review...

[justlikenancy · 13 November 2003]

This movie is so ridiculous in a negative way...I would have said in a positive (funny) way except it is far too long for what is basically a one-joke movie (yes, I am aware it intended to serve as a warning to young people and not to make people of later generations amused) (right?). At least we are not subjected to actual dialogue: the plot is revealed through a voice-over narrator. Watching these "actors" go through physical symptoms of narcotic withdrawal is either laughably pretentious or pathetically sad, I'm not sure which as of yet. I know this was a fresher concept in the 1950s, but I am SO sick of hearing about how marijuana is a gateway drug that leads to heroin addicition. On the topic of heroin, the creepy part of watching the big dealer force loyalty from the two women is was not that they were shooting up, but were sharing needles (admitedly, creepy because I have a perspective including knowledge of AIDS) and passively allowing what they knew would be a dangerous domination by the man (feminism is not dead...by-the-way, it's also a modern perspective that makes me suspect she turned back to drugs &c. because she was married off in her TEENS, stuck as a housewife with a husband who barely notices her boredom and figures a pet will straighten her out--how can anyone take care of a pet when they can't take care of themselves?). If this movie was shorter (maybe 25-30 minutes), I'd've thought it was funny.

Not too bad considering...

[scottdou · 8 April 2021]

...considering that none of the actors had any dialogue and considering the lousy music.

"Addicts Have A Strange Code Of Ethics!"...

[azathothpwiggins · 22 November 2021]

Due to her bad family life, 19 year old Cassandra (Barbara Marks) starts hanging out with a bunch of motorcycle-riding, reefer-smoking roustabouts, looking for trouble. Through her use of the dreaded "mar-i-juana", Cassandra spins out of control, spiraling ever deeper into the abyss.

When wedding bells ring, they only signify disaster as Cassandra's bliss is short-lived and quickly shattered by her compulsion for self-annihilation. She's soon back with her pot-puffing cohorts, marauding on their motorbikes.

Falling irretrievably into the drug world, Cassandra finds herself "popping goofballs" and rolling around in the back yard! By the time her parents assume custody of this wayward waif, the damage is done and Cassandra is a pot pusher selling the killer weed to the "bop crowd"!

Not even the police can stop Cassandra's street corner deals of deviltry!

A run-in with the local drug kingpin results in Cassandra's downfall, when she begins "shooting up smack", landing herself in a mental ward!

Does this stop her? No. Fueled by her drug-crazed frenzy, Cassandra gets involved with a car theft ring.

Annnnd on and on.

Please, learn from this girl's mistakes! Leave the boppers and the bikers to their various vices! Don't end up like poor Cassandra! Leave the dope to the dope fiends and listen to your parents! They know best...