Tell Your Children (1938)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Cautionary tale features a fictionalized and highly exaggerated take on the use of marijuana. A trio of drug dealers lead innocent teenagers to become addicted to "reefer" cigarettes by holding wild parties with jazz music.This is one of those films that has gone on to become a cult classic, though probably not for the reason the director would have expected. While allegedly an anti-marijuana film, there is nothing in here that makes you think marijuana is bad. A man on drugs plays the piano wildly and his hair poofs up. People dance. Nothing too shocking.At one point a woman has some driving issues, but that only really says that people under the influence should not drive. The same is true for any substance. So it is not particularly convincing and comes across as rather humorous, which does not seem to be the intent.

Some movies are so bad they're actually good, or at least, entertainingly bad. This one is not. It became a cult favorite in the 70's, but unless you're seriously high, it's hard to sit through, and not because it's propaganda, that's part of the fun, but because it's boring. The main message of the film to parents clearly comes through – that your daughters will become promiscuous (gasp) and your sons will become violent if they smoke, and they'll both descend into addiction and insanity. Interestingly enough, marijuana was made illegal the following year. I loved the wild look the pot smoking piano player had, but not much else.

Ahh, good old fashioned American 1930s propaganda, a world where ignorance and misinformation can live in blissful harmony and there isn't an opposing point of view to offend the eye. There were thousands of such films in the 30s (several of which I've seen) most of which were aimed at young teens to deter them from a life that includes such scourges as alcohol and drugs but also such hedonistic crimes as jazz music and short skirts. You see how well it worked.Realizing that prohibition didn't work, doctors and scientists of the time tried to make proof positive that young folks didn't fall into the traps of such devilish delights as jazz, liquor, sex and dancing, all of which was believed to have spun off from the briefest exposure to marijuana. There were thousands of these movies with one bizarre title after another such as Why it's Named Dope, The Dope on Dope, Pot is only for Cooking, Say Nope to Dope and the great Marihuana, the Weed with Roots to Hell! (That's the one where the girl carrying the Bible walks into a pot party, instantly gets high and jumps out a 40-story window). But the most insane of the bunch is Reefer Madness, a dated propaganda film made in 1937 that is so bad it gained a cult following.I am not, it should be said, an advocate for the legalization of marijuana. I do not believe that making it legal will solve the problem. I do however find this movie's point of view very curious. It not only sees marijuana as an epidemic but a plague, a holocaust, a vicious and vile subverted mass devil possession that once it gets it's claws into you can only lead to a violent and ugly demise for which the pits of Hell await you. And that's just for the first puff.The movie opens with a crawl that explains that marijuana is - The Real Public Enemy Number ONE!! - it further explains that the symptoms of the drug include "sudden violent uncontrollable laughter then some dangerous hallucinations - space expands - times slows almost . . . fixed". Then we are taken to a very ugly looking school principal named Dr. Carroll who stands before the PTA and bellows about the scourge, reminding us of every conceivable hiding place from shoe heels to watch cases to the inseams of sports jackets (curiously, he fails to mention pockets).He further goes on to explain how the federal government knows how to identify the substance and that if it is found, they dispose of it. How? "Recently in Brooklyn" he tells us "an acre of marijuana field was found the by federal agents who wrapped it up and threw it into a nearby incinerator." He fails to mention however that throwing 200 pounds of marijuana into a public furnace might not be such a hot idea.His exhaustive example falls on the heads of Bill and Mary, two white bred teens in the 1930s that not only look impervious to a life of crime but are, in fact, so perfectly innocent that they might not be quite sure what a life of crime actually is.Bill is a clean cut American lad. He salutes the flag, he drinks his milk, his suit is pressed and if he were any stiffer he'd have rigor mortis. He's the perfect American 30s male, white, toothy, ready for a life of patriarchal rule and inanities such as "A man is the king of his castle, and "I'm putting my foot down." Mary isn't much better in her cotton dress, her pointed brassiere, her Dorothy McGuire hairstyle and her perfectly perfect perfect face. These two wouldn't DARE leave the house without partaking of mother's big, fat greasy breakfast.One day, on the way home from school, Bill is enticed by Mae and Jack, a couple of weed wackos to go to their apartment for a little party. He likes the stuff and keeps going back where he makes nice with Blanche and Ralph, slaves to the dope. One of the best scenes involves a girl, joint in mouth, playing the piano and a paranoid Ralph yelling, "Faster! Faster!" until finally she's playing a frenzied solo.Bill's problems begin one day he after one puff of a very potent joint and beds down with *gasp* a girl! Meanwhile Mary tracks him down but falls for the old cigarette switch and is suddenly giggling like a school girl while Ralph, a wide-eye lunatic with rings under he eyes, tries to make time with her. When she resists and begins screaming, Bill runs out, still under the influence of the evil weed, hallucinates and blacks out at the same time and Jack accidentally shoots Mary.Jack pins the blame on Bill, who is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Only Ralph and Blanche know the truth, and they're stowed away in Jack's apartment for the duration of the trial, with a piano and the mother lode of weed.The best scene in the movie happens at Bill's trial where Dr. Carroll gets time for more chin music. He explains that he can tell Bill was using the dangerous drug because he seemed to exhibit symptoms of a "disassociation of ideas" (that's the first time that I've ever heard of drugs begin blamed for a person becoming creatively bankrupt). I can understand a movie that is dated beyond all reason but Reefer Madness brings it to a fever pitch, especially when dolling out such nuggets of information as the idea that a young man playing tennis "missed the ball by three or four feet".Next Wimbledon, these eyes are wide open!!

Sure I was laughing! I laughed about the bad, baaaad acting; the absurd premise and the horrible directing, convincing me that the crew must have been stoned. I laughed at the piano being played too fast, the maniacally laughing and the accidental shooting. I cracked up at lines like "one puff and you're hooked", the ludicrous supposition that Marihuana (apparently pronounced "Maahr-Wanna" in those parts of the world) is a narcotic and the assumption that THC, similar to thinking-too-hard-and-too-much, will drive you psychotic.And sure, I had just smoked a huge joint, having watched this during a holiday in Amsterdam and was high like a kite (though I have to admit: I didn't feel like playing the piano too fast, nor did it inspire me to gun anybody down).But then I began to reflect: this movie is almost 80-years old and there were still people who believed the hackneyed nonsense it propagated. I thought about all the ruined lives of those who had been caught with a few joints. I thought about Aids, cancer and multiple scleroses patients who are denied alternative medication and about all the lives that have been lost in the so-called "war on drugs" that keeps the mafia and drug-cartels alive and prosperous.That's when I stopped laughing.