1970s-era midnight movie poster for The Mystery of the Leaping Fish.The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (1916) is a short film starring Douglas Fairbanks and Bessie Love. In this unusually broad comedy for Fairbanks, the acrobatic leading man plays "Coke Ennyday," a cocaine-shooting detective parody of Sherlock Holmes given to injecting himself with cocaine from a bandolier of syringes worn across his chest and liberally helping himself to the contents of a hatbox-sized round container of white powder labeled "COCAINE" on his desk.
The movie, written by D.W. Griffith, Tod Browning, and Anita Loos, displays a surreally lighthearted attitude toward cocaine and opium. Fairbanks otherwise lampoons Sherlock Holmes with checkered detective hat, coat, and even car, along with the aforementioned propensity for injecting cocaine whenever he feels momentarily down, then laughing with delight. In addition to observing visitors at his door on what appears to be a closed-circuit television referred to in the title cards as his "scientific periscope," a clock-like sign on the wall reminds him to choose between "EATS, DRINKS, SLEEPS, and DOPE".
Banned in Boston and other cities upon its initial release in 1916, just two years after cocaine was made illegal in the U.S., Fairbanks later disowned the picture, although it resurfaced in the late '60s and 1970s during the midnight movie craze, usually on a double bill with Reefer Madness (1936) or other vintage anti-drug propaganda films, that then (as now) played as high camp. It certainly proves that there were no "innocent" times in Hollywood, particularly not in its early years. More strange than funny. More eerie and even disturbing, than nostalgic. This film is a unique work in every sense.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York City screened a restored 35mm print of the film on January 10, 2009 where, according to people who attended, that very sophisticated audience was left with their jaws hanging open by the film's end. Judge for yourself...
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