Saturday, April 17, 2021

Cocaine: Fatal Addiction.

*original review posted on 1/13/2012*
*revised on 4/17/2021*

After getting busted by the police for solicitation of prostitution; a woman named Neli (Rebeca Silva) tells her life story to a young lady beside her in the jail cell. She remembers growing up with a mother who was addicted to drugs & fully taken advantage of by a cruel & perverse boyfriend. The mother's boyfriend would also sexually abuse Neli which leads her to leave home and being taken in by a sleazy uncle whom abuses as her well. She then leaves her uncle’s home where she wanders the streets by herself and later acquires a job at a farm where her youthful days wither away out there. Neli who’s now near 40 years old; meets a young gigolo (Fernando Saenz) and falls in love with him. Barely making any ends meet; Neli gets a job as a bar girl where she not only dances with disgusting clients but also sleeps with them as well. Neli's gigolo boyfriend begins to sell cocaine for a local drug boss and this leads to Neli getting involved with drugs & dangerous criminals which intensifies her already reckless lifestyle.  



Shot on tape in various parts of Los Angeles, California; Cocaina: Vicio Mortal as serious as it wants to appear, can’t also help but look so trashy & sleazy as well. Depressing too. From beginning to end Cocaina has scenes of people involved in just about everything that’s truly fucked up. We witness sexual abuse, drug pushing & abusing and all from every character in the movie.  No one is good here. Not even Neli since she chose this lifestyle.


I’ve always suspected the late director Xorge Noble wanted to have some sort of “moral lesson” in his movies and in this one he seems to be warning us to not involve ourselves with hard drugs. Xorge it seems wanted us to see how these things of temptation can ruin one’s life so fast and so hard. A strange assumption of mine perhaps, but when you really, really look into Xorge Noble’s movies, you can see he really wanted to have a point to them even if the movie was filmed so exploitive, cheap & peculiar.  


Aside from its intriguingly depressing & grimy plot, Cocaina features an excellent cast which of course includes Rebeca Silva who was always beside Xorge through out their career in the 80’s. Here she plays an all-around tragic character and she gives it her 100% and also looks very good in it. Fernando Saenz is also great to see in this movie and it seems this was his first videohome which would lead to him starring in those type of movies exclusively from then on. Xorge Noble not only directed & wrote the movie, but also stars in it as the drug boss who takes in Fernando Saenz’s character and later betrays him & gets with Neli. What a sleazy/mean character, huh? Xorge played these type of roles often and naturally did so well since his demeanor comes off that way. And to add a cherry on top of this cocaine-induced sundae of agony; Los Terricolas (the Johnny Hoyer-fronted group) appear in the movie & perform in a sleazy night club setting. How this even happened is beyond me, but a definite charm to the movie for sure. Their performance of the song “Amor Ingrato” is bliss. 


 

9 years ago when I first watched Cocaina: Vicio Mortal, I was genuinely stunned & amazed by it. Cocaina is so depressing and looks & feels so trashy & sleazy; but you can’t help but want more of it. Cocaina caused a frenzy for me to seek out more movies just like it and this lead to many more Xorge Noble movies that I've come to have adored over the years. Cocaina: Vicio Mortal is a defining & top movie here at Trash-Mex and I can only hope you’ll get a chance to see it and enjoy it just as much as I do even after all these years that have gone by.