In Ken Smith's hilarious book Mental Hygiene, he sites Narcotics: Pit of Despair as "the stupidest drug film ever produced". Obviously he's never seen Desperate Lives. As in most films that urge us to just say no this movie is so far removed from reality that a last minute kung-fu battle on the moon seems conspicuous in it's absence.

Taking place in one of those Southern California high schools where most of the student population is either nodding off or, like future Oscar winning actress Helen Hunt, throwing itself through plate glass windows, Desperate Lives tells the story of a self righteous guidance counselor (Diana "Mommy Dearest" Scarwid) who makes it her business to harsh the buzz of anyone unlucky enough to bump into her. In her quest to singlehandedly eliminate all illegal narcotics on the west coast, she encounters Scott (Doug McKeon), a whiny teen who's turned to drugs because his parents (Diane Ladd fulfilling at least one community service requirement and Tom Atkins in a rare non-cop role) are mean. Too bad Scott never realized that even casual drug use can lead to tragedy as he falls victim to the diabolically feathered hair of Kenny (Sam Bottoms), a drug dealer who turns Scott into some kind of junior pusher and is apparently holding David Hasselhoff's Knightrider wardrobe hostage.

From there the film slips into an ever spiraling circle of misery as people are stabbed, drowned and driven off of cliffs by the giggling spectre of drug abuse. Thankfully, it all manages to end on a positive note as Scarwid crafts a drug bonfire during a pep rally and psychotically rambles on about "dead grades."

If you didn't know any better you'd swear the producers behind Desperate Lives were intentionally undermining their own propaganda. Screenwriter Lew Hunter seems to have emerged from a vanilla coated alternate reality where addiction is solved by camping trips and drug dealers own video arcades. He's also unable effectively answer why a little shit like Scott wouldn't be better off if he ODed on the floor of a Port Authority men's room. Chock full of unintentional laughs and a 'what the fuck is she doing here' cameo by Dr. Joyce Brothers, Desperate Lives is the crack addicted mother of all anti drug films.