Reefer Madness (USA, 1936) 68 min B&W DIR: Louis Gasnier. PROD: George Hirliman. SCR: Arthur Hoerl. DOP: Jack Greenhalgh. CAST: Dorothy Short, Kenneth Craig, Lillian Miles, Dave O’Brien, Thelma White, Carleton Young.
This dated cautionary fable about the evils of marijuana (originally released with the title Tell Your Children, still seen at the end) was rediscovered in the 1960s and quickly became a midnight cult favourite for potheads at college screenings or revival houses. Today (like all of these dated exploitation films that masquerade as education) it remains in high circulation on public domain DVD labels. You don’t need to be stoned to giggle at the ludicrous fear-mongering (as the narrator informs us of some kid who got high on pot and killed his parents with an axe), but it wouldn’t hurt.
The structure of Reefer Madness would still be used decades later in similar scare pictures: a fire-and-brimstone authority figure reaches to a room full of shocked parents (or even addresses the viewer) about depraved behaviours which exist just beyond our doorstep. Whether it was the evil vine of drugs, promiscuity or juvenile delinquency ravaging our land, our narrator would relate a story of how an innocent soul would be corrupted by one of these demons. Of course the public really paid to see the thrills of dope smoking and cheap sex, but these moments have far less screen time than all the sermonizing. In this sordid tale, Bill (Kenneth Craig) and his high school friends start hanging out at the apartment of an adult couple Mae (Thelma White) and Jack (Carleton Young), who introduces them to the evil weed, as well as the piano playing and cheap sex resultant from it.
Today, this flick is a camp classic because the people begin laughing hysterically before they finish the first puff of the wacky tabacky, no one inhales, and of course, for the stoned characters’ irrepressible urge to play the piano with a storm that would do Cecil Taylor proud. (“Faster! Play it faster!”) However, my favourite scenes are the feeble attempts at action: witness the hilarious moments where one teenager hits a pedestrian with his car (you actually see the man duck a good six feet away from the vehicle), and when a distraught female can no longer cope with the damage perpetrated by marijuana and jumps out a window!
Reefer Madness could also be an ancestor to all those educational films we saw in public school. The stereotypes found in classroom films were already used (and outmoded) in this movie! The teenagers all appear to be in their late 20s, and their abundant “Gee whillikers” dialogue is hackneyed to the extreme. Bill is such a wimp that he has to get his mother to stop his younger brother from teasing him. (Bill looks old enough to have fathered his brother!)
Most of these early exploitation films are worth seeing once for their historic curiosity value, but Reefer Madness remains a delight in repeated viewings. It has since been adapted to a stage play, a 1998 musical (!) and a 2005 TV movie adaptation of the musical version. Trivia note: Dave O’Brien (best known as Captain Midnight) and Dorothy Short (who also appeared in another dated “pot” classic, Assassin of Youth) were married in real life, and co-starred in several films.