Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #234: Reefer Madness (1936)

In this deliberate propaganda film produced in 1936 to warn children and adolescents about drug use, Mae Coleman (Thelma White) and Jack Perry (Carleton Young) are a cohabiting couple who work as marijuana dealers. Mae wishes to stick with adult clients but over her objections, the unscrupulous Jack decides to target high schoolers to both sell to, and recruit as dealers. These kids include Bill (Kenneth Craig), Blanche (Lillian Myles) and Ralph (Dave O'Brien), who are all lured in like moths to a flame and naturally once they first try dope, they're hooked. From here their addictions make them dabble in increasingly dangerous crimes, attempt suicide, and get subjected to commitment in asylums.

Reefer Madness was made in 1936, as I said, as an exploitation film (originally with funding from a religious group, perhaps unsurprisingly, and titled Tell Your Children) meant to be shown to parents as a morality tale for their children. It flopped and then languished in obscurity until the early 1970s, when it became a midnight movie ironically among stoners and cannabis reform advocates... and there is absolutely no wonder why any of that happened. Because in its blatant sensationalism and didactic nature, it's surely one of the most unintentionally hilarious movies ever made. Increasing that is the very lazy and unconvincingly performances from the cast, many of whom were too old to play teenagers; my favourite part is when one of them goes on trial and, after being convicted to prison time, reacts to that announcement simply by collapsing slowly into his chair and whining like he's just been told to clean his room or something. I almost fell out of my own chair then.

Director Louis J. Gasnier and writers Lawrence Meade and Arthur Hoerl obviously pursued the issue of drug addiction with good, conscientious intentions, and their approach to it may be consistent with the era, but that approach has not aged well one bit, and the existence today both of greater knowledge about marijuana and its effects and of considerably more dangerous narcotics inevitably exacerbates that as the movie's key downfall. I also want to mention I saw it, after learning of it in the great documentary series Time Warp: The Greatest Cult Films of All Time, on YouTube, where one user very sharply commented about how the teens drink alcohol all through it and it never touches on how dangerous that is (this was after the Prohibition, remember). Great point, horrific movie.