Reefer Madness (1936)

director Louis J. Gasnier
viewed: 04/28/2013

By the time I had heard of it, back in the 1980′s probably, Reefer Madness was already a cult phenomenon.  A popular one at that.

Rediscovered in the Library of Congress in 1971, the film already in the public domain, found the original cult circuit: college campuses and burgeoning midnight movie shows.  By the 1980′s it even found placeis ment on cable television (which is where I’d encountered it), and the whole thing was as if it was an Ed Wood, Jr. production.  In fact, it quite likely could be filed at the time right next to Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), in the modern era’s right to laugh at the naivety, hilariously bad acting, and unintentional comedy.

What it didn’t offer to a youth of that time was any sort of perspective.  Probably back then, I would have assumed that it was made in the 1950′s, as so many teenage-oriented feature films seemed to be, especially with the film’s perspective on small town America and the “threat to our children”.

But this would be wrong.  While I don’t know that I would have had the perspective myself to appreciate the difference between a film produced in the 1950′s and one produced in the 1930′s back then, I certainly do now.  Access to resources around the web and especially Wikipedia and IMDb, means never not having to be in the dark about things, which is something that I embrace wholeheartedly.  And much is to be learned from this.

Most interestingly, this 1936 public service propaganda/exploitation film was independently produced by a group looking to warn America about the dangers of cannabis.  But it was the efforts, reshaping, renaming, and distributing the film by early Exploitation film maven Dwain Esper that is why we have Reefer Madness today.  Dwain Esper is a fascinating and intriguing character whose own films Narcotic (1933) and especially Maniac (1934) were blasts from the 1930′s cultural Id.  What is so fascinating to me is exploitation literature or film in periods long before it became well known.  It’s ahead of its time and so much more outside of culture, hidden, yet highly representative.

The other thing that struck me about it is how this film would have come on the heels of the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.  With alcohol no longer the illegal demon (though ironically Prohibition gave rise to the mafia in the United States and ultimately all of their post-Prohibition businesses like drug cultivation and distribution), new scourges were to be had.  And while marijuana had been in popularity for some decades before, this was the time to vilify it in popular media, I suppose.

Of course, what is most funny, over the performances themselves, is the naivety over marijuana.  The people that smoke it in Reefer Madness don’t act like anyone that anyone has ever seen in real life acts like under its influence.  It’s not to say that there are not drugs that have seriously adverse and perverse influences on human behavior and lead to lives to dissolution and crime.  It made me think that you could well make a movie (at least a year or so ago) called “Bath Salt Madness” and try to play it along the Reefer Madness template and get even more outrageous results.

The Naked Witch (1961)

directors Claude Alexander, Larry Buchanan
viewed: 05/18/2012

The second On Demand exploitation flick that I’ve watched from the Something Weird channel on Comcast cable On Demand (after She Freak (1967)) was the 59-minute 1961 “nudie cutie”, The Naked Witch.  While the title was titillating enough, I was drawn by the film’s brevity, rather than my familiarity with it ahead of time.  It comes, in part, from co-writer/co-director Larry Buchanan, a self-noted schlockmeister who would go on to bring the term, Mars Needs Women (1967) to the cultural consciousness.

The film starts out with a rather long, moderately serious documentary-style introduction to the history of witchcraft, narrating over images primarily taken from Hieronymous Bosch imagery.  The film doesn’t actually have much in the way of synched sound.  Once the main narrative starts, it also uses voice-over by the lead to describe the bulk of the story.  It’s actually occasionally startling when someone actually says something.

The main character is a student who finds himself in the German enclave of Luckenbach, TX (who knew it was more than a song?), where the people live as though they were still in Germany in the 18th century.  He’s interested in the history of witchcraft and uncovers a story of a woman who was accused of witchcraft by a local man (back generations ago) and he goes and digs up her corpse (like you do.)  This triggers the woman, who wasn’t necessarily a witch in her life, just an adulteress, to come back to life (nakedly) and seek doom upon the three descendants of the man who accused her.

As for “exploitation”, the film falls under the “nudie cutie” genre.  The witch is naked, though blurred out, as she romps and dances and swims around.  And stabs people with her rather phallic spike.

Low-budget, as it is, hilariously campy as it is at times, there are shots and moments that have verve.  That is, shots and moments amid a poorly constructed, hysterically badly acted, and vaguely dull piece of film-making.  It does indeed have a naked witch and it does indeed only run 59 minutes, and outside of a few other little weird elements of charm, that’s probably all that needs to be said.

She Freak (1967)

director Byron Mabe
viewed: 02/25/2012

She Freak, which has a pretty good poster, is actually a re-make of sorts of Tod Browning’s classic Freaks (1932).  Unfortunately, it lacks the titular stars of the original film in large part, the exploitative but compelling aspect of Browning’s cult masterpiece.  Even though it’s a David F. Friedman production, it’s also pretty short on the gore and exploitation too.

So you take the Freaks of of Freaks and don’t replace it with a whole lot, you don’t end up with a particularly impressive movie.

Friedman had a long history with carnival life and one of the most interesting features of She Freak is actually the bulk of documentary-style footage of the day to day work of the carnival: hoisting the tents, erecting the rides, setting up the games of chance, and the deconstruction of it all as it moves to the next town.  Set to a mod rock soundtrack, it is pretty interesting in itself, but not necessarily if you are looking for a “she freak” or “something barbaric…on the alley of nightmares”.

The story of a pretty blond waitress who hooks up with the carnival to get some kicks but who turns out to be a two-timing baddie isn’t quite as titillating as the similar tale from Browning’s film.  In Browning’s film, the floozy marries and kills one of the “freaks”, the small man.  So, when the freaks take their revenge, it’s a little more involved.  In She Freak she hooks up with the normal-looking sideshow manager and brings about his death.  Oddly enough, outside of being slow and lacking on exploitation elements, the film isn’t all that bad.  Nor is it good necessarily.

The ending is the key.  And the final image, the one used for the movie poster, the disfigured beauty turned to “She Freak” is nearly the lone perk in the 80 some odd minutes of the film.