***SPOILERS*** Lame predecessor to the much more entertaining and unintentionally funny "Reefer Madness" or "Tell Your Children" the film "Assassin of Youth" was released a year earlier in 1937 about the perils of that dangerous narcotic and scourge of all mankind that evil plant Marijuana and how it effects Americas youth that are getting addicted to it by the hundreds if not thousands as we speak.
After Elizabeth Barrie is killed by a runaway car driven a a pot-smoking teenager young reporter Artie Brighton, Arthur Gardner, is sent to the town where Mrs. Barrie was killed as an undercover reporter. Posing as a soda jerk at the local teenage hangout to get the big scoop on what's going on in town Artie gets close to many of the teenagers in town who have pot parties at night on the beach and at their homes and in many cases joining in but secretly not smoking the stink-weed.
Mrs. Barrie left her fortune to her granddaughter Joan, Luana Walters, under the condition that she lives a moral and just life. It's the moral clause that she, Mrs. Barrie, put in her will that got both Linda Clyton, Fay McKenzie, and her boyfriend or her secretly married husband Jack Howard, Michael Owens, who are both next in line to get Mrs. Barrie's money, to try to get Joan to get a little crazy in public on pot and alcohol and thus lose the inheritance.
Tired plot with Linda and Jack trying to corrupt sweet and innocent Joan by getting her both drunk and stoned only to have her, with the help of Artie, stay clean and sober. It's in fact Joan's little sister Margie, Dorothy Short, who gets hooked on the weed and ends up almost murdering a friend of hers when she caught her together smooching with her boyfriend at a pot party Later in the movie. Margie fell into a coma that left her on the brink of death due to the evil scourge of Marijuana that she was effected by.
Trying to finally get Joan stoned in order to lose her inheritance the two, Linda & Jack, plant some pot in her spongecake at a party that gets her not only smashed but hot and horny as well. Jack seeing his big chance takes off with Joan to a hotel to get involved with her in some very heavy extra-curricular activities. This tryst with Joan has Jack's jealous and outraged girlfriend Linda tip the cops off on where they are and that Jack was having sex, or was in the same hotel room, with an underage female Joan.
On trial for her honor and morals Joan is saved by Artie coming to her rescue in the courtroom just in the nick of time. Artie lets the truth out in exposing Linda and Jack's attempt to discredit Joan as well as their drug-pushing cohort Jack Ingram as the real villains in this tawdry story.
Somewhat more accurate then "Reefer Madness" about Marijuana but nowhere as entertaining even though it did have some bits of comedy in it. There's the local town tattletale Miss. Frisbie, Fern Emmett, and old Pop Brady, Earl Dwire, a local buffoon who knew where all the bodies in the town were buried dating back to 1900 who were more or less in the film for comic relief.
