Marihuana (1936)

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Can anybody identify the dance they were doing in the opening scene? The film opens with some brief but beautiful cinematic dance moments. It's not nearly as well-shot or dynamic as some of the Lindy Hop footage that turns up later in the 20th Century. But it is some of the best dancing done by such staid characters Iv'e seen in an American movie. The American men danced like Europeans or South Americans.It's all for naught though. That little two-step marijuana mania ultimately leads to lies, cheating, stealing, fighting, death and ironic tragedy. I appreciate the plot devices employed by early directors who could not rely on CG and explosions every act. There is a nice bit of storytelling going on here in spite of the moralizing and slut-shaming.

Just about everyone's heard of the film "Reefer Madness", but back in the Thirties there was a whole slew of these 'educational' drug flicks - "The Marijuana Menace", "She Shoulda' Said No", "Cocaine Fiends", and this one - "Marihuana". They're all pretty much on a par and picking a 'best' one pretty much becomes a function of which one you just watched. It's been a while now since I saw the others I've just mentioned, but as always, you have to wonder what audiences of the era must have thought about this kind of stuff. It all translates rather hokey and over the top today, especially in the connections made between smoking marijuana and immediately falling into a life of depravity and decadence. Sometimes you know, it takes a little longer.The hook for this flick without question is the unrestricted nudity by the giggle girls who take it all off and go for a midnight swim at the beach. Given the year it was made, you might think that there would only be mere flashes of selected body parts to titillate the viewer, but breasts and behinds are right out there in all their glory. One girl even does a complete twirl at a distance from the camera, so you might say there's even some frontal nudity on display, but that's probably a stretch. Still, there's not a lot left to the imagination.As in all these stories, things happen at a pretty rapid pace once things start to go south for the main character. In this case, teenager Burma Roberts (Harley Wood) smokes a joint, gets pregnant, suffers her best friend's death by drowning, gets married, gives up her baby for adoption, starts dealing dope and eventually gets hooked on heroin herself. If that's not enough, she concocts a scheme with her pushers to kidnap her sister's adopted daughter. One guess who that adopted daughter really is.Well the opening narrative states that this story was drawn from an 'actual case history', and if it was, fine, but I get the impression that all of these exploitation flicks were made on the fly without too much thought to get in the way. Like this one, they're all a hoot and a half, and even though they might have been intended to make you get serious about the subject matter, it's hard to imagine today that they had any effect at all on the intended audience. If you've never seen one you really owe it to yourself to check out what the fuss was all about back in the day.

This film surprised me, the script, as far as literary prowess goes, is actually very well done. Amazingly, the more things change, the more some things stay the same...like the hellish descent into drug addiction. Pot is really not the focus here. The focus is on one woman's downward spiral as she slowly becomes consumed by drugs. It starts out as one big party, everyone having fun. They are skinny dipping, going to clubs, dancing...hanging out in lover's lane. Then it starts to fall apart. One girl drowns at a beach party and shorty afterwards the leading character discovers that she is pregnant...most likely having gotten that way at one of the pot parties her new "friends" (insert dope dealer here) have generously provided for one and all.Her boyfriend vows to take care of her and get a job. Of course he goes to work for the drug dealer and gets himself killed. The girl puts the kid up for adoption and becomes a dealer and addict herself. Later, she conspires to kidnap her rich sister's kid only to discover that the child she nabs is her own biological daughter. The end is swift and ugly.One thing that caught my attention right away is the portrayal of the characters. They aren't one dimensional bad guy/good guys. Everyone is portrayed as being a real person. The baddies have some redeeming qualities and the good guys make lots of bad decisions. This film has some depth to it...quite a bit actually. Its also a pretty accurate take on the drug culture...I know, I've been there.Its really not a silly film at all but a pretty stark example of the hell that your life will become if the party doesn't end in a timely fashion. I liked this film quite a bit. The scene where the boyfriend got killed is still relevant today. Lots of young guys getting gunned down for the sake of people getting a buzz. Just a fact. That was a powerful couple minutes of film. An intelligent person can take more than he might expect from this movie.

Beating the more famous "Reefer Madness" into the theaters by all of about 15 minutes, "Marihuana" is yet another morality play whose producer tries to pass off a warning about the evils of marijuana use as an excuse for the picture's real reason for being: a nude swim scene (shot so darkly that the participants can barely even be seen). A group of the oldest-looking teenagers you've ever seen (and don't you just love movies with teenagers being played by actors old enough to be the PARENTS of teenagers) fall in with the wrong crowd, and soon there's a drowning, a shooting, an unwanted pregnancy, a kidnapping (of a child you just know was supposed to be the next Shirley Temple, at least in the minds of her parents), and an ending that has to be seen to be disbelieved. All in all, a truly mind-bending experience that would rival any that could come from the actual use of marijuana.