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mad about movies: blog

mad about movies' blog


refer madness - review

by Tidbit
Published Jun. 19, 2008

This one is for djofraleigh who asked if we'd do any earlier films.

Refer Madness!

YES - there is actually a link embedded in this where you can watch the whole 68 min movie on Googlevideo.

This is camp if ever there was. The humor is that was a government documentary film (like a propaganda film) done in 1936 for the sole purpose of scaring the jeebers out of people using marijuana and demon weed. It ended up being a clasic cult film.

The story line, like so many I think we all saw in high school (at least I did in the late 80s - you know - those after school specials?) is about high school students who gets lured by those *evil* pushers and all the things that happen.  And they get downright dramatic! Eh-hem... even murder! da-da-dada

The film actually never really got anywhere. But around the 70s sometime it popped up and grew as a cult comedy.

This documentary even inspired a Broadway musical!!

I get the impression that this was really targeted at parents - to scare the parents more than the youngsters of the time.  LOL Guess it was the "Tell Your Children!!" at the end LOL

In all seriousness - the subject matter should be serious, but even I have to admit, I found it funny. I found it hard to take seriously. But if I put myself back in the 1936 mindset? It probably would have made me the most paranoid parent in the world!!!!

20th Century Fox I do beleive remade this film in 2004.  And I think there was even a musical movie version made off the Broadway musical.

Your thoughts? 



11 Comments


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Blackdog may be right - my father based most of what he knew about drugs and drug culture on this pack of lies, and it did scare him. I didn't get it until it's second go-around in the 70s when we laughed until our sides hurt, but to my father's generation it was deadly serious and based on fact.

I find it amusingly ironic that such a blatant scare tactic, which achieved it's objective (harsher drug laws...much like the Oh, so successful Prohibition less than twenty years before), is now shown only as comedy, yet laws produced in the ensuing hysteria are STILL in effect. I wonder who could be profiting from this ridiculously apparent absurdity?

The gov't has spent $23,877,491,039.00 so far this year on the war on drugs.

How's it coming along?

What was more hillarious to me Bones, was what they made pot smokers out to act like... I'm gonna tell you, I know pot smokers, even was one (probably still would be if I had the chance) ROFL and we never acted like that!!! Not the way they did in this 1936 version. That's what was so funny to me.

I'm with you DJ - pot should be totally legal. And no I'm not saying that becase I probably would partake LOL. I think it is less deteriorating than alcohol (body wise) yet we sell it. Detox from alcoholism can be deadly. Yet we sell it and tax it

If Cannabis was legalized you could grow it yourself and it wouldn't cost anything :)

Besides if a poor slob can produce a so called $84,000,000.00 worth under some trees in Eastern NC, Look at what some farmers and a few tractors could produce. It's time Gov't looks at it as a viable commodity. Anyway, it's not really the Gov't per say it's the DEA, They need it to justify the outragous expeditures, it's a cash cow for them, It's been 75 years, how's that war working out?

Ask yourselves this question and be intellectually honest.

Do you think Cannabis is illegal because it is harmful and the gov't is trying to protect us?

Before you answer think of alcohol and tobacco. Tobacco and Alcohol are allowed to take the lives of untold addicts and as many innocent bystanders as their concern for trans-fat is of greatest significance. Don't know about you but I have yet to see anyone die as a result of an Overdose of Hamburger or Driving Under the Influence of French Fries!

The government isn't the reason pot became mainstream in the late 60s, unless via Vietnam War.

Do you know how much the price of Pot would go up if it were legalized and subjected to taxes and law suits?

What's funny is how they bamboozled the public into the thinking that marijuana and hemp are "cousins" when they are really exactly the same plant. Cannabis. Most people from that era knew exactly what hemp was and understood the value of it as a viable crop. These same people had no idea it that Marijuana was the Spanish word for Hemp. Cannabis is the scientific plant name, Hemp is the common English name and Marijuana is the Spanish name. They used the spanish name to purposly confuse people into thinking it was something different and dangerous because Hemp was not known to anyone to be dangerous. Canvas is derived from Cannabis, A very valuable and much needed fiber. Does anyone wonder why Hemp is illegal if it's not Marijuana??

Marijuana is to Hemp what Cerveza is to Beer, Spanish ! Why do they use the Spanish word? Can you say Hoodwinked?

Funny how this all came about just as DuPont introduced Nylon into the marketplace.

Convenient Coincedence or Deliberate Deception??

Makes me want to hurry up and get home and get happy! :)

me too bones

...this kind of government disinformation was probably responsible for more teenagers trying pot in the late 60's and early 70's than anything else...

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