Marijuana blamed for woman’s decline in She Shoulda Said No! She Shoulda Said No & The Devils Sleep Other, Blu-ray, $29.95 The sixth entry in Kino Lorber’s Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age Of The Exploitation Picture, which is done in conjunction with Something Weird Video, is 1949’s She Shoulda Said No!, a 71-minute look at the evils of recreational marijuana use! Also known as Wild Weed and as The Devil’s Weed, this picture, presented by legendary exploitation film pioneer Kroger Babb, stars lovely Lila Leeds as a young woman named Anne Lester. She makes ends meet as a dancer, using whatever extra money she can scrape together to help get her brother Bob (David Holt) though college. She winds up falling in with some bad seeds,
lured in by mister fancypants, Markey (Alan Baxter) and gets really into smoking pot. She gets canned from her dancing gig and winds up working for Markey, moving quickly toward rock bottom. When Bob finds out what’s happened to his sister, he hangs himself! When Anne’s former employer turns her in, she lands herself a stint in the clink. During her stint behind bars, a cop named Hayes (Lyle Talbot) enlists her aid in bringing down Markey and Jonathan Treanor (Michael Whalen), the man behind the whole operation, once and for all! “Rips the veil of secrecy from marihuana smokers!” She Shoulda Said No! is pretty enter-
DVD TALK IAN JANE
taining slice of vintage exploitation. It doesn’t really bring anything new to the drug scare film formula, but it does what it does rather well, showing us how that evil weed can so easily lead to the corruption and downfall of an otherwise innocent, if slightly naïve, person. That said, Sam Newfield, credited here as Sherman Scott, paces the picture pretty well and keeps enough coming at us throughout the film’s brisk 71-minute running time that the picture proves consistently entertaining, even if it is a little bit on the predictable side in terms of how it all plays out. The scene where Anne gets her first glimpse of prison life and sees, first hand, where her choices could take her is quite memorable for how melodramatic it all is.
We’re all in this together. These are unsettling times. Like you, we’re thankful for the professionals who work to keep communities safe and healthy during this COVID-19 crisis. Our people live and work in communities like yours. We’ve taken steps to keep our employees healthy and safe—including alternative work arrangements to support social distancing.
66 Sept. 3, 2020 DuluthReader.com
Through these uncertain times, we know it’s important we continue to deliver the affordable and reliable energy we all need to fuel our lives—with safety remaining our first priority. Stay healthy. Stay safe. We’re all in this together.
