*/**** Image B (B&W) F (Colorized) Sound A- (DD) A (DTS) Extras D
starring Dorothy Short, Dave O'Brien, Thelma White, Carleton Young
screenplay by Arthur Hoerl
directed by Louis Gasnier
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I don't really have much to say about Reefer Madness (original title: Tell Your Children) that hasn't been said a million times in a million hazy dorm rooms. Yes, the film is hysterical. Yes, it's inaccurate. Yes, it's stilted and clumsy and generally ridiculous. And still, I sat largely stone-faced throughout the entire film, barely snickering at some of its gaffes and performances. The truth is that while it has the ineptitude we look for in camp, it lacks a visionary quality that could elevate it to classic status–there is no virtuoso technical insanity in the manner of Ed Wood, no gorilla creature questioning its existence à la Robot Monster, no rending of the fabric of reality as only great bad filmmakers can. Though I imagine it improves after a few bong hits.
This is the film, you'll recall, that claims that marijuana is a bigger threat than morphine and heroin combined. It's the one that begins with a principal warning a PTA meeting about the drug's evils, then segues into a thoroughly ludicrous story of fine upstanding young people being trapped in its clutches. We have Mae (Thelma White)–who runs a crash pad for pot smokers–and her associate Jack (Carleton Young), who thinks nothing of luring inexperienced teenagers to their doom. Not even the squarest, most sweater-vested members of the community are safe: coaxed up to the apartment, star students turn into crazed addicts and bad things start to happen. One hapless kid finds his girlfriend shot dead, only to be framed for her murder–and all around him, people go insane with addiction as the demon weed rots their brains.
The supposed camp value of this film is threefold. One, the filmmakers have no idea about the use or effects of marijuana; two, their innocent young characters look so uptight that you can't imagine them ever getting near the stuff; and three, they have enlisted what looks like forty-year-old men and women to play teenagers. That, I guess, is enough to convulse the more knowing, more addled segments of the population, and indeed, the film all but begs for derision. I suppose it's moderately amusing to see people puff on joints like they're Marlboros and immediately get up and dance as though they've taken speed, and it's of course easy to poke fun at such antiquated lines as, "You're on the hook for one root beer!" But after about twenty minutes of puffing and dimpled cheeks, one craves a little variety. And once the trial of the framed youngster gets going, the air seeps out of the movie, aside from one hopeless dope fiend who laughs maniacally at the slightest provocation.
The problem with this film is that it isn't ambitious enough. Had it tried, say, to mimic some wild hallucinations, this might have really taken off, but the truth is that the filmmakers are timid in their hysteria, unable to imagine such states just as they can't imagine a teenager who's less than an honours student. The filmmakers are so boxed in to their button-down worlds that they couldn't even bring themselves to do proper research–and so sad are they that their wildest fantasies about drug use are as threatening as a six-foot teddy bear. Perhaps that screams comedy to some, but for me it just evokes pity. Where Plan 9 from Outer Space made you hold your head in astonishment, this golden turkey takes you nowhere except inside the tiny mind of a spinster librarian. A good bad film is better than drugs–this is merely a dull numbness, like Novocaine.
THE DVD
I don't know what the staffers at Fox Video and Off Color Films have been smoking, but the result is one of the most berserk and ill-advised special edition (sorry, "special addiction") DVDs I've ever encountered. For one thing, they've gone to the trouble of colorizing Reefer Madness, an inexcusable crime even for such a lowly title, and the palette they arrive at is so brazen and psychedelic it would better suit a film about acid than one about marijuana. They have also, inexplicably, decided to remix the colorized film in 5.1 with Dolby Digital and DTS options, both of which admittedly sound very nice indeed. But while the Dolby finds creative uses for the front speakers (especially considering the limitations of the source material) and the DTS has an impressively round quality, getting more mileage out of the surround channels, the audio is obviously questionable from a historical point of view. Happily, the original b&w and mono version is included–only to be found listed under the "special features" menu! No big thrills in this transfer: the print is slightly worn and jumps in the gate on occasion (as it does in the colour version); detail is a little fuzzy, but at least it hasn't been made to look like a Dr. Seuss adaptation. Predictably, the mono sound is functional but a little tinny.
Extras include a yak-track featuring Mike Nelson of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" fame, who's called upon to crack withering comments at the film's expense. Alas, he lacks the writing staff that supported him on MST3K, and while there are some genuinely funny lines, the quality of the snark is disappointingly variable ("These aren't your father's dope fiends–they're your grandfather's dope fiends!"). Nothing, however, could top the hilarity of the second commentary by Legend Films' president Barry Sandrew and creative director Rosemary Horvath, who offer what must be the first commentary ever to detail the colorization process. It isn't enough for them to have savaged a black-and-white film with their digital paint pots, now they must pontificate on the reasons for their colour choices as if explaining extenuating circumstances. Though one cringes in fear when they claim to have striven to give this square film a "comic book" feel, one's jaw officially drops when they reveal that they could have easily restored the film to its original quality…but chose not to so that the film would look older and beat-up! A curse upon your house, Legend Films, even if the film in question is a camp atrocity.
For the pot initiate, there is "Grandpa's Marijuana Handbook: The Movie"(25 mins.), in which the redoubtable Grandpa Ganja extols the virtues of marijuana, ascribing such astounding powers to the drug that the segment could be seen as balancing out the feature's myths with some of its own. Grandpa proves to be one of those tedious drug enthusiasts who thinks himself a glorious rebel simply for toking up and tells unfunny jokes (Adam and Eve used pot–oh, my sides!) that cast his more serious concerns about medicinal marijuana as afterthoughts. For reasons known only to the participants, there is a four-minute outtake reel from this little enterprise. Rounding out the package: a new trailer for the film.
65 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 5.1 (Colorized), English DTS 5.1 (Colorized), English DD 2.0 (Mono – B&W); CC; English subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Fox
