Delinquent Double Feature: Hooked!(1957) / The Flaming Teen-Age (1956)

Boozers, Losers and Heroin Users!...

Hooked (1957, 71 mins.): When sourpuss cop Lieutenant Lacey investigates the disappearance of 17-year-old Ray Bowman, he uncovers a small town festering with high-school hipsters eager to get Hooked! Sure enough, not only does Bowman turn out to be "a confirmed heroin addict," but a dead one as well - killed by "a hot shot" when he tries to buy a fix on credit. Lacey quickly sends two undercover cops into the field - including director Alexander Wells, posing as a "joypopper" - who zero in on a 21-year-old pusher and his thrill-seeking underage girlfriend who want to introduce a super-square straight-A student to their dope-crazed friends. Also released as Narcotics Squad and Curfew Breakers, Hooked is a gleefully lurid cross between a JD flick, Reefer Madness, and Dragnet from the be-bob bleakness of the 1950s!

The Flaming Teen-Age (1956, 69 mins.): From director Irvin S. Yeaworth, the man who made The Blob, 4-D Man and Way Out, comes the "true-life story" of Fred Garland, a liquor-lovin' talent agent, swindler and "complete bum" who gets hooked on heroin and ends up becoming...a preacher! Shot in 1952 as Twice Convicted, the film eventually mutated into The Flaming Teen-Age when additional non-Yeaworth footage was added of teenage alcoholics making damn fools of themselves!

Two bizarre, cautionary drug tales from the 1950s are collected here. In Alex Wells's HOOKED!, a bitter cop investigates a small-town teen's disappearance and uncovers the community's sordid underbelly of heroin and crime. THE FLAMING TEENAGE, directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. (of THE BLOB fame), focuses on a dissolute con man who discovers God after becoming a heroin addict.