Cameron Mitchell plays a war hero and prize fighting champion who becomes addicted to the strong painkiller morphine and literally becomes a Jekyll and Hyde. Happily married with a stepdaughter he adores, Miotchell can't escape the memory of the pains he suffered in Korea and the morphine treatments he used to counteract those pains. Told by his doctor that he was addicted, Mitchell manages to live life without it-for a while. But all of a sudden, he begins having withdrawal symptoms, the hideous aches start all over again, and he ends up in the most downtrodden of urban neighborhoods looking for a fix. Like Ray Milland in "The Lost Weekend" and Kirk Douglas in "Young Man With a Horn", he descends into near madness as he deals with withdrawal, envisioning the ceiling of his hospital room caving in on him and ocean waves pouring into his windowless room. Mitchell,best known for playing a good guy in "Love Me or Leave Me" and a bad guy in "Carousel", intertwines the two of these characterizations and is excellent, while Dianne Foster is wonderful as his long-suffering wife. She stands out in a scene where she discovers Mitchell raiding their daughter's piggy bank. In the supporting cast, Jack Albertson is instantly recognizable as one of his old cronies from his prizefighting days. The war battle scenes are extremely intense, and Mitchell's withdrawal comes off as horrific. While the film avoids becoming preachy about the risks of drug abuse, it does have a sort of a drive-in movie feel to it, but the leads help it rise above the lack of quality of most exploitation "B" movies of the late 1950's.
Review of Monkey on My Back
