Runtime: the version I saw was 66 minutes long
Directed by: Louis Gasnier
Starring: Dorothy Short, Kenneth Craig, Lillian Miles, Dave O'Brien, Thelma White
From: George A. Hirliman Productions
This cult classic is something that I have seen before but it was about time I reviewed it here. It's great in terms of unintentional laughs. My Letterboxd review is below:
This is a movie I've seen a few times before and was in fact on TCM Underground late last Saturday night but as it is easily found via public domain, I decided to wait until today to watch it on YouTube. The rating is due to film quality and how accurate it is to how marijuana actually is (to echo the thoughts of another person on Letterboxd, the movie treats it like it's comparable to the effects of bath salts), although it has some great unintentional chuckles.
The movie was originally made by a church group to show how bad weed is, but the infamous exploitation filmmaker Dwain Esper purchased the film and added some “scandalous” things so it'd be perfect for the exploitation scene. I won't go on and on about how fascinating that scene is; I'll just mention it's something long gone from the modern filmmaking world. Way back then, you could go on tour with a print of something that is under the guise of being “educational” but is actually supposed to be sleazy and titillating, far removed from the Hays Code that governed official movies in the United States at the time. In the future I'll try to look more into that scene, how people went across the country w/ prints in the trunks of their car, and all the characters involved; Esper was a colorful figure but he wasn't the only one by any means.
As for the film, it's a laughable tale where an unmarried couple living together ropes in teenagers to come over and smoke dope. Those square kids turn sinful and do such things as dance to jazz music-oh, the horror! Several people get killed along the way. This picture's version of cannabis has some different effects from actual weed; in the movie, it makes you all hopped up full of energy and makes you do things like hang out with a bunch of young men if you are a woman... and makes you kill your family with an ax! See what I mean about the “bath salts” comparison? At least they got the “constant laughter” part right... hey, I know people who are big fans of ganja, I've seen its effects before, and it basically makes people relaxed and mellow.
I won't get into how the chronic was demonized in the 1930's by means of propaganda and made to be worse than it was. I'll just say that films like this helped perpetuate those fears about the drug back then. No matter your opinion of THC, in the years after it was released it became a camp classic; New Line Cinema was able to stay afloat in its early years by showing this on college campuses back in the groovy 1960's. Eighty years after the picture was first released, in this era where more and more states are decriminalizing the bud and sick people are more able to use it, Reefer Madness is something that we can all laugh about.
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