Saturday 23 February 2013

Reefer Madness: Or "Go Tell Your Children"


Financed by a church group in 1936 under the title Tell Your Children,  the movie was renamed Reefer Maddness when it was bought for general cinema release by Dwain Esper. Originally designed as a morality tale to dissuade cannabis use among teenagers, Esper, an early exploitation movie director and producer (and one time exhibitor of the mummified body of Oklahoma Outlaw Elmer McCurdy)  re-edited the movie to turn it into the legend of an exploitation movie you find below.

Whether its is worth your time to view it in full (It is. Nothing even by Ed Wood can compare) - as found below - can be decided by quickly viewing the following clip.

See, never say I don't provide public information. You have been warned.

By the way, as an interesting aside, director, Louis J. Gasnier, had been, prior to the arrival of the "talkies", a highly successful Hollywood director. See for example, the somewhat legendary, and much copied and even parodied,  serial "The Perils Of Pauline". After retiring from directing, he went onto make a number of "guest" appearances in other movies. His last being as  elderly Frenchman in the Steve McQueen war film Hell Is for Heroes in 1962. He died aged 87 a year later






Directed by Louis Gasnier
Produced by Dwain Esper
Written by Arthur Hoerl
Starring Dorothy Short
Kenneth Craig
Lillian Miles
Dave O'Brien
Thelma White
Warren McCollum
Carleton Young
Distributed by Motion Picture Ventures
New Line Cinema (rerelease)
Release date(s) January 15, 1936
Running time 68 min.
Country United States
Language English
Budget $100,000