The Substance

In a totalitarian society in a near future, the undercover detective Bob Arctor is working with a small time group of drug users trying to reach the big distributors of a brain-damaging drug called Substance D.

Heroic, but dull, Fred Maklin and beautiful, but spoiled, Jerrie Turner wash up on an uncharted tropical island. They are soon captured by ex-Nazi Colonel Osler, who also has imprisoned a bevy of beauty contest winners whom he allows to be whipped by his slavering Nazi storm troopers. He has, you see, been extracting some glandular substance from the girls to inject into his wife Mona, who suffered terrible facial disfigurement, in efforts to restore her beauty. Things get worse as the island is used for test bombing by the US Air Force.

In a totalitarian society in a near future, the undercover detective Bob Arctor is working with a small time group of drug users trying to reach the big distributors of a brain-damaging drug called Substance D. His assignment is promoted by the recovery center New Path Corporation, and when Bob begins to lose his own identity and have schizophrenic behavior, he is submitted to tests to check his mental conditions.

Daniel Radcliffe stars as Beat Generation icon Allen Ginsberg in this biopic set during the famed poet's early years at Columbia University, and centering on a murder investigation involving Ginsberg, his handsome classmate Lucien Carr, and fellow Beat author William S. Burroughs. The year is 1944. Ginsberg (Radcliffe) is a young student at Columbia University when he falls hopelessly under the spell of charismatic classmate Carr (Dane DeHaan). Alongside Carr, Ginsberg manages to strike up friendships with aspiring writers William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster) and Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) that would cast conformity to the wind, and serve as the foundation of the Beat movement. Meanwhile, an older outsider named David Kammerer falls deeply and madly in love with the impossibly cool Carr. Later, when Kammerer dies under mysterious circumstances, police arrest Kerouac, Burroughs, and Carr as potential suspects, paving the way for an investigation that would have a major impact on the lives of the three emerging artists.