{"id":18870,"date":"2026-08-11T21:00:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T01:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=18870"},"modified":"2026-08-10T17:57:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T21:57:32","slug":"confessions-of-an-opium-eater-1962-albert-zugsmith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/18870","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962, Albert Zugsmith)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Odd human trafficking spy\/rescue story, less furious than <em>The Furious<\/em> but overall better, set in 1900ish San Francisco.  Yet another movie where newspaper men have to solve local crimes themselves, sneaking around to find kidnapped brides held in bamboo cages.  All the dialogue is philosophical quotes.  Costarring every Asian guy they could round up to play Chinese (including the Chinese-Hawaiian Richard Loo, who played Japanese in <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/18863\">The Steel Helmet<\/a><\/em>, and the Korean-American Philip Ahn, who&#8217;d play a doctor in <em>Shock Corridor<\/em>), I found nothing wrong with the movie&#8217;s politics except when it scared a cockatoo into trying to fly while tied to a perch.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/opium7.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/opium4.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>Vincent Price is a rogue element stepping into the middle of a gang war filmed on Western sets, hmm.  Nice freakout scene with masks, skulls, funhouse lenses, and zoo animals.  In the middle of the rescue operation Price has a couple hours to kill until the girl auction starts, so he stops to smoke some opium.  Soon afterwards when he&#8217;s accosted by baddies, the drug has given him super-slo-mo powers.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/opium6.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/opium5.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>Feels like a <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/16936\">Messiah of Evil<\/a><\/em> \/ <em>Carnival of Souls<\/em> indie.  Zugsmith produced a couple Sirk films and <em>Touch of Evil<\/em> before cementing his legacy with MST3K-bound pictures about wayward high schoolers.  As far as I can tell, the source book by Thomas De Quincey (best known as originator of <em>Suspiria<\/em>) is an 1810s drug memoir and contains no human trafficking thriller story.  The Monthly Film Bulletin review excerpted <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Confessions_of_an_Opium_Eater\">on wiki<\/a> is spot on, just add &#8220;(complimentary)&#8221; to the end of each sentence.<\/p>\n<p><em>Philip Ahn and Vincent have the same tattoo:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/opium2.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><em>The late Richard Loo faked his death, joins Price for the final fight:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/opium3.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/319\">Angelo<\/a>\/<a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/11190\">Master<\/a> has a cameo:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/opium1.jpeg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Odd human trafficking spy\/rescue story, less furious than The Furious but overall better, set in 1900ish San Francisco. Yet another movie where newspaper men have to solve local crimes themselves, sneaking around to find kidnapped brides held in bamboo cages. All the dialogue is philosophical quotes. Costarring every Asian guy they could round up to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[410,3523,136,1195,886],"class_list":["post-18870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1960s","tag-albert-zugsmith","tag-drugs","tag-kidnapping","tag-vincent-price"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18870"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18917,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18870\/revisions\/18917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}