The Best of 1930s Anti Cannabis Propaganda Films
Everyone loves looking back at the straight faced seriousness of 1930s propaganda films, and laughing at the ignorant scare mongering that was once taken as fact. The cannabis world has some excellent examples of that, and these three films have recently been released as a box set for marijuana seed growers everywhere to see the ‘evil’ of their ways…
Marihuana (1936)
This follows a familiar theme of the exploitation film, and the promotional poster really showed these routes nicely. The phrases “daring drug expose” and “shame, horror, despair” appear above the subheading “WEED with ROOTS In HELL” and the promise of “Weird Orgies, Wild Parties” and “Unleashed Passions” appear at the bottom. With this in mind, surely the film can’t disappoint? Well, judge for yourself with its outlandish pot-plot: Berma is a typically good young girl who gets addicted to marijuana after one puff at a party… which turns deadly!
One of the revellers drowns as they all head naked down to the water. The dealers hide the body, and our heroine, out of her mind on the film’s version of marijuana, gets pregnant. To cover the costs, her boyfriend gets a job working for some of the dealers, before getting promptly shot on his first day ‘at the office’. Berma, now impoverished, is forced to give up the baby and become a drug pusher herself. Jealous of her sister who has managed to have a daughter of her own, the increasingly drug addled Berma decides that kidnapping said child for a ,000 ransom is a great idea – only it turns out that the child is actually her own biological daughter. All this culminates with the dealers getting arrested, and our heroine taking an overdose of harder drugs and dying – and all because she smoked marijuana, kids.
Reefer Madness (1936)
Very much viewed as the ‘Casablanca’ of 1930s Cannabis exploitation films, Reefer Madness has gone down in folklore as such a classic that 20th Century Fox released a colourised version of the film straight to DVD in 2004. The unrealistic colours used add to the campy humour its now seen as, and an especially nice touch is the smoke from the marijuana, which is made to appear blue, green, orange and purple with each shade showing a different level of addiction.
The plot is a little too complicated to explain here (it makes The Usual Suspects look like The Fast and the Furious), but hopefully the movie’s idea of cannabis side effects will inspire you to rent this legendary flick:
Manic laughing while committing hit and run manslaughter
Having sex with people you don’t like
Accidentally shooting your friends
Memory loss to the degree you don’t remember being framed for murder
And most hilariously of all:
Playing the piano faster than humanly possible.
If you know anyone who does these things, you should probably stage an intervention or something.
The film, which takes the form of a parable told by a high school principal, finishes with said educator warning the parents that similar consequences could happen to their children. He states “the next tragedy may be that of your daughter’s… or your son’s… or yours, or yours…” before finally pointing to the camera and dramatically stating “or YOURS!” The words “tell your children” appear across the screen, and we fade out, left to worry that one day we too may play the piano exceptionally fast.
Assassin of Youth (1937)
Probably the least entertaining of the three, but not without its charms, Assassin of Youth has a more focussed plot. An elderly woman is killed in a car crash with a cannabis addicted youth (naturally). Her inheritance is left to her pure but simple grand daughter Joan on the condition that she leads a moral life. If she fails in this, the money goes to her evil drug dealing cousin. Unsurprisingly, the evil one goes out of her way to make the heroine look like a depraved, drunken and high reprobate by way of getting the money.
The best thing about the film (aside from the hilariously over the top side effects of marijuana) is just how terrible the dialogue is. At one point, our favourite simpleton Joan is approached by a stranger who has just spiked her drink:
Joan: “Gee, this tastes funny.”
Stranger: “Don’t worry. Just drink it.”
Joan: “Okay”
With a quick wittedness like that, you have to worry for her happy ending, where she does indeed get the money. She probably ended up investing in some magic beans.
It’s her sister Margie that lives up to the film’s promised marijuana abuse though, and eventually ends up in a coma, having almost killed someone and been diagnosed by a doctor as “a hopeless psychopath” – another example of the excellent dialogue.
If this has whet your appetite for stoner movies with a difference, all three films can be bought as part of a boxset from all good DVD sellers. For the full effect, make sure you watch them back to back!
Robert Kane is the web editor of Sensible Seeds. Based in the UK, the company sells marijuana seeds and informational books on marijuana to customers all over the world.
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