Since the 1970s, Reefer Madness (1936) has been a cornerstone of the midnight movie phenomenon. Removed from its original context, the anti-drug melodrama gained popularity when shown to audiences of a different generation, who tended to have different views on the sinister menace of marijuana. As a result, the film was met with laughter, mockery and disbelief. Reefer Madness was considered so inept, unhip and out-of-date, that audiences flocked to it, and the first "ironic" classic was born.

The joke, however, was not on the filmmakers of 1936, but the cooler-than-thou midnight movie audiences of the 1970s. For Reefer Madness was not a straight-faced examination of drug addiction. Nor was it produced by the U.S. government as an educational tool, as they commonly believed. In fact, its purpose was not even to frighten viewers away from experimenting with cannabis. No, the makers of Reefer Madness were more hip than they have been given credit for. They knew exactly what they were doing.

The film is what's known today as an exploitation film, and it fits within a well-defined genre of low-budget American independents that glamorized sex, crime, and drugs while only pretending to offer a serious social message.

At a local high school in Everytown U.S.A., a moral crusader named Dr. Alfred Carroll (Joseph Forte) lectures the School-Parents Association on the scourge of marijuana. To illustrate the dangers the weed poses to the youth of 1936, he recounts the story of a group of high school kids (none of whom look younger than thirty) led down various paths of moral degradation.

Mae Colman (Thelma White) and Jack Perry (Carleton Young) run a small-time dope ring, preying on the kids who hang out at the local soda shoppe. Some kids, like high school sweethearts Mary Lane (Dorothy Short) and Bill Harper (Kenneth Craig), easily resist the drug's temptation. But other kids are fooled by Mae and Jack's easygoing ways and, in time, even the most cautious teens succumb to marijuana's mesmerizing power.

Mary's younger brother Jimmy (Warren McCollum) takes a few harmless puffs and runs over a pedestrian while driving Mary's car. Under the influence of the devil's weed, Bill forgets Mary and falls into the arms of the weed-fiend Blanche (Lillian Miles) at one of Jack's wild parties, while Jimmy is holed up with his girlfriend in the next room. Mary comes looking for Bill, and is enticed to experiment by the lecherous Ralph Wiley (Dave O'Brien). After their initial bout of uncontrollable laughter subsides, he begins ripping the clothes from her body. Younger brother Jimmy rises to Mary's defense, shots are fired and Mary lies dead on a sofa. Jack puts the gun in Bill's hand and convinces him that he committed the crime.

While Bill is on trial, Jack keeps Ralph and Blanche under lock and key in their apartment until the storm of investigations subsides. As the walls of sanity close in, Ralph commands Blanche to play the piano faster...faster... faster. When Jack finally returns, possibly to silence the paranoid Ralph, he is bludgeoned to death by the hopped-up addict.

Now Blanche and Ralph are on trial for murder. Under the third degree, Blanche spills her guts and the drug ring is broken. She also clears Bill of the initial crime of murder and then, in a final act of decency, commits suicide by jumping through an open window. Now that the cloud of "marihuana" smoke has dispersed, will the likes of Bill and Jimmy ever be able to reclaim their innocence?

Reefer Madness's plot was preposterous in any era, by anyone's standards. Its preachments were as heavy-handed and obvious in 1936 as they were in 1973 (or 2008). But people didn't go see the film for its plot, or its message. They went to see characters indulging in vices that were forbidden to be shown in movies produced by the major studios. Responding to criticisms of the film industry, the MPPDA (Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association -- later the MPAA) in 1934 began enforcing a Production Code that specifically outlined things that were not to be shown, or even insinuated, in movies. Hollywood had become homogenized. Here's the catch: independent filmmakers were not bound to the rulings of the MPPDA. This opened the door for low-budget companies with no-name actors to compete with big-money Hollywood titles in a way that was previously impossible.

Not only did "exploiteers" ignore the list of taboo topics, they used it as a veritable blueprint for their muck-raking, sensational exposés of prostitution, venereal disease, unwanted pregnancy, nudism, sterilization, child marriage, birth control, adultery, insanity, and of course, drug abuse. Any topic was game, as long as it was presented in the guise of education. Virtually every exploitation film begins with a long title scroll describing the problem, usually citing a few statistics and quoting a governmental authority. And pretty much every exploitation film ends with a stern lecture from a policeman, principal or doctor, generally delivered point blank to the audience. As long as these obligations were fulfilled, the filmmakers were free to indulge in vice to their heart's content, much to the audience's pleasure. Thus we are treated to a parade of sexual abandon, drug-fueled murder and a prolonged scene of Blanche slipping her shapely legs into a pair of black stockings. Those were the rules of the exploitation game.

The game was run like a carnival. The films were advertised with the most garish campaigns imaginable, and the prints were driven from town to town by a "roadshowman," who would often dress up like a doctor and lecture the audience, selling educational booklets for extra cash. This traveling salesman of independent film would also be there to help promote the screening, and intervene in case a local censor board or social group objected to the film.

Roadshowmen would also practice the "bait and switch." It was common practice for exploitation distributors to periodically re-title their films, create new ad campaigns and re-release them to an unsuspecting public. This allowed them to squeeze every bit of mileage (and potential ticket sales) out of a limited number of films. Reefer Madness was actually a third-generation title. The film was originally produced and released as Tell Your Children, which was shortly discarded because it lacked sensationalism. It resurfaced in 1939 as The Burning Question. The film was also shown (by W.F. Roadshows) as Doped Youth, with the sub-title Victims of Marihuana. The title Reefer Madness is believed to have originated with a 1947 re-release.

Screenwriter Arthur Hoerl had two years earlier written the screenplay of another exploitation film, Enlighten Thy Daughter, sold as "A Smashing Indictment of Parental Prudery!"

Thelma White was under contract to RKO Studios and was "horrified" when she was loaned out to the independent production. "I'm ashamed to say that it's the only one of my films that's become a classic," she said in a 1987 Los Angeles Times interview. "I hide my head when I think about it." White, who was paid an estimated $2,500 per week to appear in the film, died on January 11, 2005, at the age of 94.

The film was resurrected as a cultural oddity by Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for Reform of Marihuana Laws (NORML), who supposedly located a print in the archives of the Library of Congress in 1971. He purchased a print of the public domain film for $297, then screened it in New York as a fund-raising event in May, 1972. New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye saw the film and introduced it to the midnight movie circuit that same year.

According to film critic J. Hoberman, "Reefer Madness was extensively screened throughout California as a fund-raiser for an electoral campaign to decriminalize marijuana" in the Fall of 1972.

When it was first circulated as a midnight movie in 1973, Reefer Madness was double-billed with Martian Space Party, a half-hour sci-fi parody created by the Firesign Theatre.

Underground filmmaker Jack Smith wrote an article for The Village Voice describing the climate at a late 1972 midnight screening in New York, "the scum of Bagdad audience with the yelling of witticisms, sound effects, booing, cheering, etc., pathetically eager and straining to encourage the screen to give the hallucinations they know very well are locked up in the movie business."

There have been numerous remakes of Reefer Madness. An ironic musical version by Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney gained popularity in Los Angeles after its April 28, 1999, debut. On October 7, 2001, the play had its off-off-Broadway premiere. The New York Times grimly reported, "According to recent reports, irony is finished in American pop culture... There is further evidence, however, to be found at the Variety Arts Theater, that at least one extreme form of the ironic arts -- its flashiest and silliest incarnation, known as camp -- is indeed ready for last rites." The play was in turn adapted for the screen for the Showtime network in 2005. Variety warmed to this version, saying, "this infectious, quite elaborate musical production will probably shine best on the small screen.

Producer: Samuel Diege, George A. Hirliman
Director: Louis Gasnier
Screenplay: Arthur Hoerl, Lawrence Meade, Paul Franklin
Cinematography: Jack Greenhalgh
Film Editing: Carl Pierson
Art Direction: Robert Priestley
Music: Hugo Riesenfeld, Heinz Roemheld
Cast: Dorothy Short (Mary Lane), Kenneth Craig (Bill Harper), Lillian Miles (Blanche), Dave O'Brien (Ralph Wiley), Thelma White (Mae Colman), Carleton Young (Jack Perry).
BW-66m.

by Bret Wood