ABC After School meets Reefer Madness...

Helen Hunt even mocked her scene from this Afterschool Special (and her other early TV appearances) when she hosted Saturday Night Live.

Will the fight for our sanity be the fight of our lives?--Flaming Lips, "The Gash"

To say that the movie is ridiculous and over the top would be an understatement. I remember when it was first on TV in 1982. I could be wrong, but as I recall it wasn't an after school special, but rather a made for TV movie that appear during primetime on ABC. It was two hours (with commercials) and at the time the after school do dahs were an hour or something. The next day after it aired in 1982 at school (I was in High School at the time) all we could do is laugh about it. In 1982 is was the funniest thing I�d seen presented about the horrors of teenage drug use. Like Reefer Madness, whatever serious points that Desperate Lives was trying to make where utter blown away by the complete lie that was the story being presented. The years that have past have only made it more ridiculous. I remember when I went to college and saw Doug McKeon standing behind me in some registration line or other and I just flashed to Desperate Lives. I got to giggling just thinking about this movie and trying to stop in order not to embarrass myself just made it all the worse.

Is drug addiction funny? No, but poorly acted, poorly direct, over the top and completely ill informed, childishly written, sensational and outrageous dramatizations of teenage drug use that made similar era Mexican soap operas seem less heavy handed ARE funny. Look, when something is so massively removed from the realm of reality that to take it as anything other than a comically bad isn�t a sign that the viewer is heartless or uncaring, but rather it just proves that the viewer has a brain and realizes the amateurish sincerity presented results in comedy, not drama. The filmmakers may have had all the best intentions in the world (or just wanted to cash in on the �just say no� campaign of the day much like the rest of the schlock they are credited with), but imagine it was like your grandmother making a movie about what the hip cool kids were into today and viola you have Desperate Lives.

In the end, Desperate Lives makes the viewer wish they were high.

I actually think Diana Scarwid is a great gal and wonderful actress who has played a wide range of people over the years, but she is so bad in this I can't help think that she just thought it was a goof while making it or � I dunno� maybe she was whacked out of her mind on pills just to get through the job.