For a pedigree pulp writer of dimestore paperbacks, Jim Thompson has an amazing track record in film. His first experience as a screenwriter was for Stanley Kubrick, who chose him to write the dialogue for The Killing and Paths of Glory. Since then, many of his novels have been translated to film, including The Getaway, directed by Sam Peckinpah and again by Roger Donaldson, Pop. 1280, filmed as Coup de Torchon by Bernard Tavernier (nominated for best foreign film of 1985), A Hell of a Woman filmed as Serie Noire by Alain Corneau, and The Killer Inside Me, directed by Burt Kennedy, and The Grifters directed by Stephan Frears.

     Of all of Jim Thompson's novels, The Alcoholics is the one that most easily translates into a very low budget movie and/or a TV series. It is based upon Thompson’s true experiences in a drying out clinic. It all takes place in the clinic, which means one set and twelve characters. It's the flipside of Cheers, the place where people go to sober up instead of to get drunk.

     The setup is similar to that of Fawlty Towers - a crumbling enterprise on it's last legs held together by a madman who will do anything to keep it going. There are the regulars who live there, plus the new clients who check in and out every week.

     Just as M*A*S*H used the Korean war to comment on the Vietnam war, El Healtho uses Dr. Murphy's experimental alcohol treatment techniques to comment on modern day drug addiction. Considering today's moral climate, the time is just right for a movie and TV show about a place where people go to dry out.

     El Healtho perches on a cliff overlooking the Pacific in the southerly limits of the city of Los Angeles. It is a rambling stucco and tile structure, styled in that school of architecture known as Spanish Mediterranean to its adherents and "California Gothic" to its detractors; originally the home of a silent motion-picture actor, Reginald Catalina, whose taste, whatever else may be said about it, proved considerably better than his voice.

     It's 1952, and Dr. Peter S. Murphy has been running El Healtho "Modern Treatment for Alcoholics" for years. His staff consists of a nurse, two orderlies, and a cook, which is only two people less than the total amount of patients currently residing there.

     Which is why El Healtho is going under. As a matter of fact, if Dr. Murphy doesn't come up with $15,000 by the end of the day, he will have to close up shop and throw his staff and clientele out on the streets. Not that the patients are to blame, no, he should have thrown most of them out long ago since so few of them actually pay any rent. But people end up at El Healtho on their last legs, and after their cure (or lack of it), Murphy simply doesn't have the heart to put them back on the streets.

     He contemplates suicide, but no, today is the day to wrap up all business. He will either solve everyone's problems in one day and somehow raise the $15,000, or he will walk out and find a new job, maybe at an amusement park. Murphy surveys his patients and tries to figure out which ones might be able to help him get the dough:

     There's Humphrey Van Twyne III, a pre-frontal lobotomy who doesn't belong there in the first place. His relatives are rich, but to get more money from them requires such a desertion of his principles that it's out of the question.

     John and Gerald Holcolm are brothers and ex-Hollywood agents, full of stories of the good old days. They came to live in El Healtho years ago and not only haven't left but haven't stopped drinking. He wonders why they still live there since he obviously hasn't done them any good, and since a good deal of his time is wasted chasing down their hidden supplies of hootch.

     Jeff Sloan is an advertising man, a hard worker who has blown one too many deals, so his boss has sent him to El Healtho to dry out. He pays his rent but he's a tough nut to crack. He insists that he doesn't have an alcohol problem, that he's just there to relax before going back to work and the bars. Murphy figures he might have some money, but if he could only get Sloan to admit his problem and stop drinking, El Healtho's existence would be justified.

     Reginald Catalina doesn't have any money. Having been recently picked up in a standard rousting of skid row bums, he's been sentenced by a judge with a strange sense of irony to dry out in his old home, now El Healtho. He stays in his room and watches old black-and-white movies of himself in his younger days. He never talks, which makes him a perfect confidante to everyone.

     Bernie Edmonds once won the Pulitzer prize for journalism. Now he's a re-write man on an L.A. paper but his re-writes are getting stranger and stranger. Soon he'll lose that job. Soon he'll have to actually get dressed and stop wearing his perpetual pajamas and robe.

     Susan Kenfield is a movie star. She's also pregnant and she doesn't want to be, but it's too late to have it taken care of. Now she's in hiding from her fans, reporters, and public scandal.

     Lucretia Baker, R.N., enjoys her job just a little too much. Under her stiff starched uniform lurks a stiff starched personality whose only outlet is inflicting pain. Humphrey Van Twyne III is an easy target since he's a gibbering idiot, but she lives in constant fear that hidden traces of her secret sessions of torment might be discovered. She's a virgin, but not for long.

     Josephine, Judson, and Rufus, are the kitchen staff and orderlies. They stand to lose the most if El Healtho crumbles since good jobs for blacks are few and far between.

     Dr. Murphy spends his day enmeshed in the standard soap opera of his patients lives. Several solutions to his monetary problems pan out. The Holcolm brothers try to put together one last film deal, but no one will return their calls. An opportunity to blackmail Humphrey Van Twyne's relatives presents itself, but Dr. Murphy simply can't bring himself to do it.

     At the last possible minute, El Healtho is saved from the least likely direction. Reginald Catalina finally speaks, and admits to Jeff Sloan that El Healtho is his old home. Sloan doesn't believe a word of it until Reginald proves himself by opening up a secret wall panel. He guides Sloan through a series of hidden passages and staircases until they reach a secret cellar. A wine cellar. Sloan opens up a case and removes a bottle. "This is Chateau Lafitte Rothschild 1929!" he exclaims. He's about to open up a bottle and imbibe the delicious liquor when he realizes that it's worth several hundred dollars, and that there are hundreds of cases of it filling the cellar to the ceiling. In one final act, he not only stops drinking but turns over the contents of the cellar to Dr. Murphy who  sells the wine for precisely $15,000. El Healtho is saved by booze.

Full Script available.