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Reefer Madness (DVD)
by GentleGenius
RELEASED: 1936, Cert.15
RUNNING TIME: Approx. 68 mins
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FILM ONLY REVIEW
Jack and Mae have a neat little business going. They sell marijuana not merely to consenting adults....they also like to lure college students into their little net, ably assisted ... by their friends Ralph and Blanch.
The film opens with the head of a school issuing a dire message to the PTA meeting he is addressing and anyone who should happen to be watching the movie, about how deadly dangerous marijuana use is....worse, (apparently and according to him!!) than alcohol, heroin and opium!
As well as the prophet of doom head teacher talking utter drivel to his PTA meeting, the film's opening titles issue a printed piece of scaremongering about this terrible, evil drug known as marijuana. It warns that those who fall foul to its use will suffer dreadful disturbances...both physical and emotional, plus will become dangerous, violent and irreversibly insane!
When teen students Bill and Jimmy become embroiled in Jack and Mae's world of dope-peddling and smoking, things go badly wrong!
That sets the basic plot, and if you feel as though your constitution can stand it, then it's your call to watch it for yourself to see what happens.
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Firstly, I must say that I haven't listed the actors above as they were largely unknown, being picked at random by the director to bleat their way through this utterly crazy low-budget piece of bizarre propaganda. The characters of Mae and Jack actually don't come across too badly in the acting stakes, but the remaining cast's efforts are truly laughable. From a visual point of view, Reefer Madness is quite difficult to watch, as the filming techniques are absolutely awful. The picture is grainy, hazy in some parts and too bright in others - bright to the point where it makes some of the scenery and actors' faces appear ghostlike. At intervals, the corners of the screen can start flashing, almost strobe-like in effect, even to the point where I'd guess it could thus be a no-no for somebody with epilepsy. This is entirely the fault of poor filming techniques. The sound quality is terrible too, and I don't put any of these faults down to the age of the film as I've seen many others from that era and earlier, where the audio-visual qualities are very good. The camera work and sound technology are so appalling on Reefer Madness, it almost looks as if it was one of the first 'talkies'
Everybody in the film, regardless of whether they are involved in the dope-smoking scene or not, comes over as utterly weird, yet I'm certain this wasn't intentional, it being entirely down to inadequate acting skills.
However bizarre and off the wall Reefer Madness is....and it definitely wasn't meant to be either of those things....it's still a very entertaining 68 or so minutes of ridiculous entertainment. Sometimes a film or a piece of music or whatever can be so desperately bad that it's good....and, this is one of those films which is.
The way the effects of being under the influence of 'wakky bakky' are portrayed in this film is absurd, ludicrous beyond all rational comprehension, and what makes it even more laughable is that the film was a sincere attempt to draw attention to something which was perceived as a problem in American society....a genuine piece of public awareness propaganda.
If you can manage to follow this movie, bearing in mind that the picture is grainy, unsteady, and with that almost strobic effect caused by poor camera techniques, plus the bizarre way in which people speak to one another together with the utterly inaccurate behaviour expressed by characters who are supposed to be 'under the influence', chances are high you could find it very entertaining and amusing.
The parts of Reefer Madness that almost had me rolling in the aisles with mirth are the way people were smoking their joints...I mean, they weren't even inhaling, yet within seconds were prancing around like demented idiots! Also, nobody inhaled, and personal experience has taught me that if you smoke a joint like an ordinary cigarette, then you definitely won't feel anything from it! The craziest, most loopy and hilarious part of the film for me was....at a point where somebody gets killed, Jack goes into a frenzied panic, then yells in this really hysterical voice, "She's dead....get me some water!!" I do appreciate that may not seem very funny to those reading this review, but if you see the film, you'll know what I mean when it gets to that part.
I also feel it's crazy that now in 2011, Reefer Madness is selling on DVD with.....wait for it.....a 15 certificate! That is almost as bonkers as the film itself!
Bearing in mind everything I've said above, I'm regardless going to award Reefer Madness four stars, because although it is probably the most preposterous piece of dire rubbish that I've ever seen (bar perhaps Titanic!), it is spectacularly entertaining, simply due to the sheer lunacy of the whole thing. I have no idea if any Americans took notice of the film's desperate and dire warnings at the time, but if so, I'd hazard what I feel to be an accurate guess that they were the same people who, twenty years later, believed there were under-cover Communists on every street corner and hiding in every closet.
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For anybody who may wish to watch this piece of way over the top hysterical but delightfully hilarious nonsense, a DVD of the film can be purchased on Amazon as follows:-
New: from £1.58 to £10.50
Used: from 1p to £11.00
A delivery charge of £1.26 should be added to the above figures.
Thanks for reading!
~~ Also published on Ciao under my CelticSoulSister user name ~~
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Charlie Chaplin - Modern Times (DVD)
by Jake Speed
Modern Times is a classic 1936 Charlie Chaplin film and is regarded by many to be his masterpiece or at least very close to it. The film - the last to feature his famous everyman Tramp character - was a protest by Chaplin against capitalism and the drudgery of mass industrialisation with his nameless character beginning Modern Times in a ... dull repetitive factory job that soon drives him to despair and slight madness. Chaplin eventually causes all manner of mayhem as he struggles to keep up with the pace on his tedious task on a huge assembly line, which involves endlessly tightening bolts with wrenches for a product that is never revealed. The steelworks factory - the Electro Steel Corp - is run by a manager/President (Allan Garcia) who reads comics in the paper and communicates with his workers via two way monitors. "Section 5 - speed her up - 41!" After going quite literally mad, Chaplin loses his job and somehow becomes mixed up with a Communist march and a young homeless orphan girl known as the Gamin (Paulette Goddard), leading to jail and various comic capers and escapades on the breadline.
The film memorably opens with a shot of masses of sheep crowding into a small passageway before it morphs into factory workers doing exactly the same thing - a visual trick stolen by Woody Allen in 1975's Love and Death. Woody Allen's comically inept attempts to work an exercise machine "for the busy executive" at the beginning of his 1972 comedy film Bananas is another moment that was clearly influenced by Chaplin and Modern Times. Like Allen, Chaplin proves completely at odds with technology despite his best efforts. The early sequences in the steel factory in Modern Times are just about as wonderful as cinema can get. We see Chaplin lay on a conveyer belt and go through a number of mechanical tunnels and gears and his shenanigans on the assembly line are magical at times with his extraordinary physical dexterity and balletic sense of timing. The sight of Chaplin snaking through the cogs of the conveyer machine is wonderfully done and there is a great sequence afterwards when - slightly doolally after his experience and the factory in general - he manically tries to tighten anything he can, including noses and then dances a nutty ballet.
There is some amazing stuff in Modern Times that is way ahead of its time. When Chaplin visits the bathroom for a break an image of the boss suddenly appears on the wall exhorting him to get back to work. This is a clever moment, especially when one remembers it was dreamt up years before the age of television and CCTV surveillance. There is something very Orwellian about Modern Times but the social message is of course served up in a film that is ostensibly just a lot of fun and charming, amusing, entertaining - not to mention a visual feast. There are many great sequences in the film such as a very funny moment where Chaplin mistakes cocaine for some spices and pours it all over his food with predictably comic results. No one can quite do drunk or under the influence like Chaplin with his clowning and complete control over his body remaining timeless. Another great moment has him roller-skating blindfolded through a department store and we also see him perform a headfirst dive into a few inches of water! This man was unquestionably a genius.
Chaplin doesn't speak in Modern Times - although he does sing, amusingly turning a song into complete gibberish - but there is some source music in the film from the distant factory bosses and some radios. Chaplin even has the indignity of being feed by a machine at work, cunningly designed to increase production. "Good morning, my friends. This record comes to you through the Sales Talk Transcription Company, Incorporated: your speaker, the Mechanical Salesman. May I take the pleasure of introducing Mr. J. Widdecombe Billows, the inventor of the Billows Feeding Machine, a practical device which automatically feeds your men while at work? Don't stop for lunch: be ahead of your competitor. The Billows Feeding Machine will eliminate the lunch hour, increase your production, and decrease your overhead." Chaplin, who grew up in great poverty himself in a London slum, is firmly on the side of the undertrodden and poor in Modern Times. Later, he gets a job as a security guard but even gives food to some men who try to break in. "We ain't burglars - we're hungry." Chaplin's critique of mass industrial society where the people who do all the hard manual work get few of the rewards remains a fairly timeless grumble.
The film is interesting too in that it makes some concessions to the age of sound but still feels like a silent film with Chaplin's physical brilliance the star of the show. There is a brilliant scene where he accidently becomes the leader of a Communist march merely by innocently picking up a flag someone has dropped, the scene developing in a completely natural way but nonetheless conforming perfectly to the world the character inhabits, numerous scrapes befalling him just because he tries to do the right thing. Modern Times is a little sentimental perhaps but also poignant with a lightness of touch despite the topical themes that Chaplin addresses like poverty, homelessness and the alienation of mass industrial society.
Modern Times is a magical and charming film and one of the very best things Chaplin ever did. He has good support in the film too from Paulette Goddard (who was his real life wife at the time) who makes a suitably feisty heroine. Wonderful vintage fun for the eighty or so minutes that it runs to. Extras with Modern Times include an 26-minute documentary by Philippe Truffault, three trailers, an eight-part photo gallery and one deleted scene, a silent 42-minute 1931 documentary/propaganda film called In the Machine Age made by the US Department of Labour and a clip of Chaplin appearing on the the Liberace Show in 1956.
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