Synanon (1965)

Load of rubbish!!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Junkies helped by those who know what it's all about a recovering junkies-is the modus operandi for the titled organization located right on beautiful Venice beach. Expensive property to even stay at overnight now, it was quite wild during the days prior to the dawning of Aquarius. What could be preachy or a 60's version of a 1940's exploitation film ends up bring an engrossing drama with the usual variety if characters who come in every age, every gender, every nationality.A cast of veterans and newcomers mingle together in this raw expose of the counter culture that is still working overtime today to sober people up. Among the veterans are Edmund O'Brien and Richard Conte with Eartha Kitt at the height of her popularity, right before her real life controversy with President Johnson. Her character makes a speech in her very first scene that reeks of clichés and would be irritating and trite if it had been anybody else.The main story surrounds heroine junkie Alex Cord, coming down and desperate. By chance overhearing a public relations meeting going on, he is immediately drawn in, but angered to discover that one of the patient leaders is his former prison cellmate chuck Connors who planted heroine in Cord's locker. Falling in love with single mother patient Stella Stevens, Cord still won't open up, especially after he sees a Synanon meeting where Conte lays into Stevens, attacking her on every level that could insert a psychological knife with a squeeze of lemon following.While the elements of exploitation are overwhelming, there are subtle nuances that explore the vast insecurities and self hatred's of these pathetic characters. With film noir veterans O'Brien and Conte breathing down their charges necks, treating them like naughty children who need to be humiliated to do their chores. It's a mixed bag of serious human suffering and deliberate shock where the only way to cure them is to break them.

Studies of drug use and addiction in these United States show there wasn't really what could be called a "societal problem" until after passage of the Harrison Act of 1913, the law outlawing so many drugs.Marijuana was outlawed about 25 years later, and all the drug prohibition has faithfully followed the pattern set by alcohol prohibition in the 1920s: crime and misery and violence and bloodshed.And huge profits for the people willing to break the laws against selling and distributing those products.Opponents of prohibition believe, with much research and evidence backing their position, that the laws cause more problems than do the drugs.There is really not much support for the drugs themselves, although there is growing support for the freedom to choose, and even the most ardent opponent of prohibition recognizes that at least some people suffer badly from drug use and especially from drug addiction.Synanon was founded by a former substance abuser to help addicts kick their habits. This movie is about him and that effort.It could have been a cheapie exploitation movie, and the original advertising plan did seem to appeal to the sensational. But it had, instead, an intelligent and apparently honest script and some of Hollywood's most talented actors.I started watching a TCM presentation with trepidation, prepared to switch channels, but found myself fascinated.Especially by the actors.Chuck Connors is one of my favorites and I sat in awe of his very low-key performance. Yes, he stayed busy, even having two TV series, but I don't think he got the respect he should have.Edmond O'Brien is one of the greatest, an actor capable of probably any type of characterization.Richard Conte is another of my favorites, and again his low-key performance fit his role just perfectly.Many others also deserve praise, but I've gone on too long. Let me just say I highly recommend "Synanon."

***SPOILERS*** One of the first movies to take on the drug problem head on does have its merits but gets so tangled up in its own good intentions that it falls completely apart well before the ending credits."Synanon" has to do with the famous Synanon House in Santa Monica California that used tough love to help rehabilitate its many dope addicted members. The places founder ex-alcoholic Charles "Chuck" Dederich, Edmond O'Brian, used his own life experiences on those addicts in the plan to get them back into the real world of being hard working and productive citizens and off the dope that they got themselves into over the years.It's when transported New York City dope addict Zankie Albo, Alex Cord, dropped in one evening at the Synanon House to sleep it off that things started getting real dopey there. Not at all looking to help himself get off the stuff, heroin, Zankie in fact got to fellow Synonon House resident Joaney, Stella Stevens, who fell madly in love with him to take off and get high with heroin supplied to him by his good friend and drug dealer Hopper, Gregory Morton. While all this was going on reformed dope addict Ben, Chuck Connors, who served time with Zankie back east tries to get both him and Joaney back to Synanon House before they both end up dead from a hot load, drug overdose, or behind bars in the local "clink" if their lucky.***SPOILERS*** It didn't take long for Zankie to get in touch with Hopper at the Zanzibar Bar in downtown Santa Monice to get his desperately needed dope to shoot up with. Going to a local hotel to get high together with what looked like a blank eyed and zombie like Joaney Zankie shots up with a load of hot heroin and soon conks out before Ben can break into the place to stop him from doing it! To the shock of everyone in the hotel room, Ben Joaney & Hooper, Zaknie goes into convulsions and drops dead moments after he hit, with a needle, himself!The now hysterical Joaney seeing what dope can do to her, like in what it did to Zankie, finally sees the light and together with Ben heads back to Synanon House to save whatever is still left of her life to save from the ravages of dope addiction!P.S It was sad to see that even Synanon House's founder Chuck Dederich later fell back into his previous existence as an alcoholic as well was take up drugs,to expand his mind, by getting himself stoned almost daily on LSD. Dederich also went as far as trying to murder those who he considered his enemies by planting deadly rattlesnakes in their mail boxes that had him convicted of attempted murder! Dederich broken drunk and forgotten died in 1997 at age 83 but the good work he did, before he lost his mind, in saving hundreds if not thousands of dope addicts will always be cherished and remembered by them and their friends and family members in what a great job he did in saving their lives from the horrors of drug addiction when he was still normal.

One of the first movies to show drug addicts & their attempts to 'get clean'. Main character 'Joaney' played by the great STELLA STEVENS is an addict that is trying to straighten out her life and get custody of her son. She is attending counseling sessions at the famed SYNANON HOUSE in sunny California. Lots of good acting support from off-key sources like EARTHA KITT. Overall, film is average.