Reefer Madness

Reefer Madness In college, I saw this movie several times and it always mad me laugh - and it still does. It was created in 1936 to warn people about the dangers of marijuana, but they missed the boat. Way over-acted, ridiculous dialogue, but funny!

movie came fast and in great condition no problems what so ever

-hollywood

Smoking marijuana will either kill you, drive you insane, turn you into a murderer, drive you to suicide, or at the very least, result in you having a very scary hairstyle. That is the message put forward by "Reefer Madness", an anti-marijuana propaganda movie from the 1930's. The film is heavy-handed to the point of being laughable and you will likely either find it boring, like my mother did (she kept on asking me when it was going to end, even though the running time is only 66 minutes), or so bad that it's funny, as I did.

The plot itself isn't all that bad. It's about a group of nice, clean-cut, high school students who fall in with a bad crowd and includes all sorts of exciting things like hit and run accidents and a court trial. I can see why this film was remade (as "Reefer Madness - the Musical"). However, at the same time I can also see why it was remade as a comedy.

Watch this film with a group of friends and rip it to shreds. After all, that's how this film because a cult classic.

The service was great and it was probably my fault for lack of attention to detail among the plethora of DVDs, but I was distressed to discover that this old film has been colorized. It mounts but does not please. I can't even bring myself to look at it. I have a Beta version of the original and may just have to get it converted after all. Buying it seemed cheaper but since it does me no good. . . Color? Blasphemy. Reason for purchase: Years ago, when BetaMovie first came out, one of my sons participated in the making of "Beer Madness" (in BW of course) and I needed to have a matched set that I could keep when I throw out all the old Beta stuff. Back to the drawing board.

Reefer Madness (Louis J. Gasnier, 1936)

For some reason, this weekend, there was a treasure trove of old movies I've always wanted to see scattered across our television. I started Sunday night's Depression-era extravaganza with Reefer Madness. Now, I'm fond of saying of bad movies--those with a certain élan, anyway--that they're probably better watched through a haze of smoke that can only be generated by certain controlled substances referenced in the title of this film. This is the exact opposite; while I know it's grown to be a cult favorite among some of my, shall we say, more indulgent friends, I can't imagine a movie being any more of a buzz-kill than Reefer Madness.

It's amazing how much influence Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will had already had a year later; compared to earlier propaganda films, at least, Reefer Madness is a triumph of subtlety and decorum. That said, it would probably have been pulled off a whole lot better (and, ultimately, been a whole lot more dangerous) had the people who put this film together decided to exercise the merest standards in casting for this movie. In a film in which my main outrage should be directed to the absolute idiocy of the "scientific studies" on which the movie's script is supposedly based, I can't find it in myself to get past the quality of these actors. The first scene where we meet Bill Harper (Kenneth Craig) and his girlfriend Mary (Dorothy Short) is so painfully acted that I almost choked. On my water. Uhhhh, yeah, water, that's it.

It only gets worse from there. Honestly, it really is one of those movies so bad you have to see it to believe it. A lot of people seem to think that it's bad enough to tip over the line into that sort of cheesy brilliance one associates with Night of the Lepus, but it didn't catch me that way. Well, at least I can say I've seen it now. *