Reefer Madness. An astonishingly terrible "educational" exploitative movie about marijuana, which it claims to be more deadly than heroin, opium and morphine... centres around a guy called Jack who talks to his wife, Mary, like a piece of shit, and "The Boss" running a, and I use this term very loosely: drug ring where they invite "kids" (played by actors who look to be in their early 20's even by 1930's standards) back to their place to smoke weed.
Apparently, in this films universe; smoking weed causes you to go into some kind of mental state of supreme confidence, or to spiral into mental psychosis where you run people over, beat people to death with a cane, and try to rape people... now I don't actually smoke, weed, tobacco, or otherwise, but I'm from a crap town and I've hung around with my fair share of stoners and for the most part, most stoners I knew couldn't be bothered to get up off the sofa, let alone dance around uncontrollably and jump into bed with somebody at the drop of a hat.
It really is quite awful. Packed with various shots of maniacal grimacing and uncontrollable laughter apparently bought on almost immediately upon taking a single puff of a joint, some of the worst fake laughing you will ever find in any film, period, and some proper poorly staged death scenes, this could almost pass as a satire of an educational film. A bad satire.
The "hit and run" segment played out almost like a comedy scene than a believable hit and run; apparently according to this film when you get struck by the side of a car, despite being clearly a third of the way in front of it's path in the previous shot, you crumple and drop to the floor where you stand and not, you know, bounce the fuck over the bonnet of the car?! Terrible.
A genuinely awful attempt, and massively over exaggerated demonstration of the effects of the "dread marijuana" smacking of superiority and uninformed opinions with it's only redeeming factor being that Ralph (played by Dave O'Brien) maybe looks a bit like Jude Law. Other than that, complete bollocks. Zero stars.
