Surprisingly incoherent and boring

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Chuck Connors steals the show in "Red Skies of Montana" director Joseph M. Newman's "Death in Small Doses" as a long-haul trucker addicted to illegal amphetamines in this criminal expose. The movie opens with a reckless trucker gobbling Benzedrine pills who has gone too long without sleep and then hallucinates that a car has swerved into his lane traffic. He tries to avoid smashing into the oncoming vehicle, plunges his rig down the side of hill and dies in the crash. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Washington, D.C., launches an investigation into this epidemic. They dispatch a clean-cut, square-jawed agent (Peter Graves of "Stalag 17") to infiltrate the trucking business and come up with a lead. Everybody that Tom Kaylor runs into while he masquerades as a student driver either is addicted to 'co-pilots' or dies from them. One guy dies from a heart attack that was connected to his amphetamine abuse while loading up Kaylor's truck. As Mink Reynolds, Connors lives at the same boarding house as Kaylor. Mink is strung out constantly and living perilously on the edge as if there is no tomorrow. The guy can get neither enough action nor enough amphetamines. He pushes them on Kaylor, but Kaylor doesn't buy. Eventually, even a workhorse like Mink succumbs to their dire effects, and reluctantly divulges to Kaylor the name of his source. Earlier, Tom had been training as a student driver with an older, more mature trucker, Wally Morse (Roy Engel of "The Naked Dawn") who knew how deleterious the drugs were. Morse stuck his neck out too far snooping around and got beaten to death at a truck stop while Kaylor was sleeping in the back of the cab. Now, with the tip that Mink gave him, Kaylor has a solid lead. Ironically, he discovers that the woman, Valerie 'Val' Owens (Mala Powers of "Rage at Dawn"), who runs the boarding house where he lives, is up to her ears in the amphetamine racket. Incidentally, she was married to the guy at the beginning of the movie who wrecked his rig and rolled it down a hillside. The criminals nab Kaylor and take him to remote spot where they intend to kill him when one of them changes his mind and helps Kaylor defeat them. The beauty of this concise, efficiently helmed, black & white, 79-minute film is that Newman doesn't waste a second. The dialogue is sharp, too.

A drugs movie with a difference. This B-Movie was designed to show the dangers of prescription drugs, in this case amphetamines such as Benzedrine or 'bennies' as they are called here. Joseph M Newman was a better director than he was given credit for and he handles the somewhat sensationalized material well enough. The cast, (Peter Graves, Mala Powers, Chuck Connors, Merry Anders) are strictly bargain basement and the script is something of an embarrassment but it's nicely shot on location by Carl Gutherie and there is some decent stunt driving and as the bottom half of a double bill it's not that bad.

***SPOILERS*** FDA Agent Tom Kayler, Peter Graves, is sent undercover as a student trucker to uncover a drug ring that providing truckers amphetamines known as "Bennies" to keep them awake during their long and tedious cross country hauls. It doesn't take long for Kayler to get his trucker partner Wally Morse, Ron Engle, to open up on what's going on in the trucking industry in him being addicted to "Bennie" himself and not keeping it, by popping them all the time, secret. In Kayler trying to find out the identity of the Mr. Big who's behind the drug smuggling operation causes Wally, who just couldn't keep his mouth shut, to be murdered by Mr. Big's thugs for talking too much.Kayler for his part keeps on digging and finally gets a lead with his new trucking partner hipster and beatnik like Mink Reynolds,Chuck Conners. Mink is so strung out on "Bennies" that it's a miracle that he can drive a tricycle much less an 18 wheeler. Minks addiction to "Bennies"soon lead to him freaking out and attacking Kayler that lead him to him, after Kayler flattened him, ending up in the hospital emergency ward suffering from a serious case severe drug with-drawls. Soon it becomes evident that Mr. Big is working out of Dunc Clayton's, Robert B. Williams, truck stop that's a popular watering hole for Mink who seems to get his supply of "Bennies" there. With Kayler getting too close to the source, Mr. Big or Mr. Brown as he's known, of who's behind the drug ring he's set up to be whacked like Wally was by one of Mr.Big's top henchmen. ***SPOILERS*** As we and Kayler soon find out this drug operation a lot bigger then he even imagined. Big enough to have him put his guard down in becoming deeply involved with with the person, not Mr.Big, who's been secretly running it right from the start! Never getting his hair mussed up or his fine tailored and pressed clothes, as a trucker, soiled Peter Graves as DEA Agent Tom Kayler almost single handedly puts an end to this drug operation! But not without the help of Dunc Clayton who changed sides when convinced, by Kayler, that he'll be iced along with Kayler by his drug pushing cohorts. The ending has a still immaculately dressed, this time with a suite and tie, Kayler confront the real Mr.Big who, in after trying to bribe Kayler to lay off, doesn't realize that he not only has the goods on him but also has the cops and DEA Agents waiting outside about arrest and cuff him!

This movie is considered a "classic" in my family; my Dad was the agent (brilliantly acted by Peter Graves) on whom the title character was based. Hollywood added a romance but other than that they got the story (based on a series of articles about my Dad in the Saturday Evening Post) right. Some message boards about the movie criticize Chuck Connors for over-acting, but he didn't; that's how it was. This movie is a good reminder of what we owe to a lot of America's unsung heroes who have taken on messy tasks over the years to make America a safer place. Thanks to my Dad and other agents the movie now looks like a dated "period piece" portraying world with which we do not have to be familiar.