On this edition of 1938Superman's Public Domain, we feature the classic 1936 exploitation film "Reefer Madness". Reefer Madness, originally titled Tell Your Children, is a 1936 drama film directed by Louis Gasnier. Its cast was composed of mostly unknown bit actors. The story was written by Laurence Meade. The plot revolves around the tragic events that follow when high school students are lured by pushers to try "marihuana": a hit and run accident, manslaughter, suicide, rape, and descent into madness all ensue.
Tell Your Children was financed by a church group and intended to be shown to parents as a morality tale attempting to teach them about the dangers of cannabis use. Soon after the film was shot, however, it was purchased by notorious exploitation filmmaker Dwain Esper, who took the liberty of cutting in salacious insert shots and applying the more scandalous title of Reefer Madness, before distributing it on the exploitation circuit.
Some sources have also claimed that the film was financed by Harry Anslinger's Federal Bureau of Narcotics, or even by anti-hemp interests such as DuPont or William Randolph Hearst. The claims that Reefer Madness was produced as an exploitation film, thinly veiled as an educational piece to comply with the Hays code are simply untrue. Though it is true that lesser-known films such as Esper's own Marihuana and Elmer Clifton's Assassin of Youth were/are exploitation, Reefer Madness is merely a misguided (and highly inaccurate) morality tale. Such education-exploitation films were common in the years following adoption of the Code, and the subject of cannabis was particularly popular in the hysteria surrounding Anslinger's 1937 Marihuana Tax Act.
After a brief run, the film lay forgotten for several decades. There was no concept of after market in those days, especially for films that existed outside the confines of the studio system, and were therefore considered "forbidden fruit." For this reason, neither Esper nor the original filmmakers bothered to copyright the movie, and it eventually fell into the public domain.
In 1971, Reefer Madness was discovered in the Library of Congress archives by NORML founder Keith Stroup, who bought a print for $297, and made it the darling of pot smokers and college campuses. For this modern audience the poor production values and overacting create an uproarious comedy that provides perspective on the current "War on Drugs". Stroup is also responsible for the notion that the film was originally created as a propaganda piece. Distributing Reefer Madness to college campuses of the 1970s helped bankroll the burgeoning film company New Line Cinema. In 1973, the MPAA gave the film a PG rating. Today, Reefer Madness is considered to be a cult classic, and one of the best examples of a Midnight Movie. Its fans enjoy the film for the same unintentionally campy production values that made it a hit in the 1970s. The film was spoofed in a musical of the same name, which was later made into a made-for-television film in 2005.
The movie's title has also been adopted into some usage as a general catchall term for any anti-marijuana propaganda which is particularly over-the-top or fantastical. (description courtesy of Wikipedia)
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