The most startling thing about Schreyer's drugs-on-the-run piece is the brazen 'lifting' of Elmer Bernstein's striking Frankie Machine title music, almost unchanged from 'The Man With The Golden Arm', as well as a recognisable chunk of Herrman's 'Vertigo' music .. such borrowings give this film a suggestion of artistry which it completely fails to justify.
In fact it is all very humdrum stuff, neither too wild or much naked either, come to that (and the 'youths' are getting on a bit as well). The most recognisable face in this rather tedious piece is Robert Hutton, who plays the unperturbable and cop. Of course it is he who buys the Mexican dolls into which the heroin is secreted, and then transported across the border, so poetic justice demands that it is he who has to find it again. Hutton was better used in such cult films as 'The Slime People' (1962), 'Colossus of New York' (1958) and a handful of others. Here he just looks vaguely engaged.
As Switch the knife happy thug on the run from the Honor Farm,(in a film in which, oddly, knives are the weapon of choice - even when a gun is around) Rowland is serviceable enough, although he could have made his performance more menacing. As it is, Switch veers uncertainly between aggression, indecisiveness and whining.
The best scene? Madge's swaying vision as her withdrawl sets in, done to Herrmann-'inspired' music. But even she's seen better days in William Castle's great 'House on Haunted Hill' (1958) or Hill's crazy 'Spider Baby' (1964).
A film mostly of interest for completists or those fanatical about this part of exploitation history.
