“Hi! I’m dead! Well, actually, my name is Jill, well, it is, or it was or whatever! Anyway, I’m dead but you know what I mean! I’m Jill!” 

When a movie starts like that, I’ll watch the whole thing.

Felipe is introduced as a high school hero whose team just won a big game. Seeking to look cool and prepare for the college life he imagines, he smokes marijuana and drinks beer, noting that his old man does the same. His story ends abruptly when he gets behind the wheel of a convertible, drives recklessly and crashes, killing himself and his friend. 

Jill’s story begins at a house party where she meets a boy named Craig (who wears way too much cologne). He introduces her to cocaine, claiming it makes everything easy. Her addiction spirals quickly; she ends up trading her most prized possession, a necklace given to her by her grandmother, to a dealer for an eight-ball, then overdoses alone in her room.

Eddie is a bright, science-loving kid who gets pressured by an older friend to try crack cocaine, being told it turns the inside of your head into a video game. After just a few uses, Eddie collapses. The narrator reveals that Eddie had an undiagnosed congenital heart defect, and the crack cured it in the most macabre sense possible.

Directed by Traci Wald Donat, the daughter of Helen Reddy, and written by Robert Bucci and George Larrimore, this is a remnant of the just say no era, a war on drugs that kept people in prison for decades for marijuana possession, but also allowed the CIA to put crack into black neighborhoods. 

Speaking of drugs, Raymond Cruz, who played Felipe, would go on to be Tuco Salamanca on Breaking Bad.

Did I do drugs during my review? Of course I did. I’m Sam. Anyways, I’m dead, but I’m Sam!

You can watch this on YouTube.