Tell Your Children

Plot synopsis:
Parents are lectured about the dangers of their children using marijuana with a cautionary tale of what happened to once-innocent kids became addicted to the drug: their mind alterations lead to a car accident, a shooting, and an innocent boy being brought to trial.--------------------------------------------------Synopsis written by KrystelClaire:A long written essay against marijuana.Newspaper reels and first pages telling of how the police is tackling the issue of the marijuana war. In one of them, there is an advertisement telling parents to attend Alfred Carroll (Josef Forte)'s lecture at the School-Parents Association in Truman high school auditorium. He mentions that marijuana was grown in a tenement court in New York.Cut to Mae (Thelma White) who is woken up rudely by Pete Daley (Richard Alexander) who wants to lure kids into criminality. Three friends separate. Ralph (Dave O'Brien) points to some attractive young women. The girl Ralph wants most is Jimmy Harper (Warren McCullom)'s sister. Bill (Kenneth Craig) thinks she's interested as well. They go to a jazz place, where Mae sits uncomfortably as she knows that the real objective is to lure kids into drugs. The audience can see Ralph smoking like crazy in a separate room. The say goodbye to Joe (Lester Dorr), the bartender.Mary (Dorothy Short) takes Jimmy home, where Mrs Lane (Mary MacLaren) is happy to see them performing Shakespeare in a ridiculous way. When they kiss, she intervenes. Jimmy says goodbye and falls into a fountain garden. Junior (Bob Burns) laughs about Jimmy having a girlfriend.Ralph and Jimmy go partying. Mae distributes marijuana cigarettes - her husband is delighted that he already has a new kid in the bag: Jimmy. Mary encourages Jimmy to smoke. Ralphs laughs like a maniac: he knows he's succeeded. He goes to see Jack (Carleton Young), who thinks that kids are the best prey - now we would consider young adults, he doesn't mean children. Jimmy drives while high on dope. He scares Jack with his reckless driving and runs over a man.When Jimmy arrives home, it's dinner time. He is shocked, and tired, and his sister notices, but not his mother. Mr Wayne (Edward Earle) thinks that there marijuana is not as dangerous as other drugs, in spite of Mr Carroll's insistence.Jimmy's grades are much worse. Dr Carroll tries to make him confide on him, but Jimmy says that he's worried about a home problem, and just leaves. Mary doesn't play tennis. Jimmy dances at Mae's while he's high. Jimmy makes love to a girl while Ralph laughs like a maniac.The police questions Jimmy's sister if she used her car on the 29th. Mary lies to protect him. Joe gives Mary the address where Jimmy is. Mary sits to wait for Jimmy, and Mae's husband offers her a marijuana cigarette, which she smokes without realising it's not tobacco she's using. Mary starts laughing for no reason. Mary rejects Pete Daley), but Jimmy, completely doped, at first believes that they are making love. When he intervenes, there is a fight between Ralph and Jimmy. In the ensuing fight, the gun which Ralph uses goes off and kills Mary. Ralph dusts the gun off and puts it into Jimmy's hand, who's still doped. When they wake him up, they make him believe that he killed Mary.Jack prepares an alibi for himself. Carroll declares in front to the judge and jury that he's seen Jimmy very much changed, and that marijuana was to blame. The Judge (Edward LeSaint) presides. The jurors (Marin Sais, Phil Dunham) stare at the declarations in shock. Blanche (Lillian Milles) feels sorry for Jimmy, but Jack tells her to shut up.The prosecuting attorney (William Royle) blames marijuana as the cause of the murder. Jimmy is in shock. One of the jurors thinks that Jimmy may have been insane, but the foreman (Frank O'Connor) makes a case for all the opposite: they want to hang Jimmy Harper as soon as possible, even seeing a hanging rope noose in the lightbulb cord. Henry Harper (Edmund Mortimer) isn't able to console his wife.Bill wants to see Jack: he's having strong withdrawal symptoms. He chain smokes. Bill kills Jack. While Mae screams, but Bill's girlfriend laughs like a maniac.The police arrests all the gang. Blanche says that Jimmy didn't kill anybody. It was Jack, and she stayed silent.Instead of going to jail, Blanche commits suicide jumping from a window. The Judge declares Jimmy to be non-guilty. The Harpers hug Jimmy. Ralph is delirious because of marijuana.BACK TO DR CARROLL'S SPEECHHe says that anybody's children may be the next open. He points to the camera (and the audience).The end

Tags: murder, cult, violence, flashback, insanity, melodrama

Review:
Thelma White (Mae) has noted in interviews that the producers and director Louis Gasnier asked the cast to "hoke it up."  The famous "Faster, Faster" scene is, in fact, a direct parody of a similar scene in the classic musical 42nd Street (a scene in which Dave O'Brien--Ralph in Reefer Madness--played a chorus boy).
As I said, it's a very enthusiastic propaganda film which lies back and forth about the effects of "marihuana" so as to scare parents into discussing the drug with their children (hence the original title, Tell Your Children...think of them, please!!!).
Much more awaits the viewer of Reefer Madness, including a crazed piano player who's "hot" on the "dope" and about to "crack" (these kids with their drug lingo!) and an odd scene where the main character's little brother pines about his model airplane for what seems like an eternity.
with all the hype this movie has gotten over the years, you'd expect it to be a zany laugh riot...but it's not THAT funny (except the finale.) i think there may be an emperors-new-clothes syndrome with this flick, everybody expects it to be so utterly wacky that i'll be worth watching...but it's boring.oh yeah...interesting...this movie was made when marijuana was legal in the usa..
Imagine an anti-'marihuana' scare film released in the 1930s, complete with horrendous acting and a completely inaccurate portrayal of the drug's effects, and you have "Reefer Madness." Only it isn't funny, even in a so-bad-it's-good way...it's just a slow, stupid, intolerable mass of celluloid garbage that's best left forgotten..
For the uninitiated, this much retitled film may have given the impression of being a very low-budget variation on the contemporary socially-conscious "message" pictures made by major studios like Warner Brothers when, in actual fact, I believe this is just surface coating and, underneath, a tawdry, cheap and campy exploitation flick is trying to get out; this is borne out by the utterly sensationalistic and risibly over-emphatic (in other words, completely unrealistic) treatment replete with rampant eye-rolling by the "victims" in the throes of marihuana addiction which reaches ridiculous new heights in acting of this sort; I'd be willing to bet that many more people tried the weed AFTER watching this movie than were eventually put off by it!
One of the exploitation films of the 1930s focusing on the evils of drug taking, 'Reefer Madness' shows us a group of high school kids swept up by the menace of the killer weed, marijuana.
From the moment they go up to Mae's for a smoke, strange behaviour ensues, from violent laughter at Shakespeare, to hit and run, murder, and total insanity.Put together under the disguise of a public information film, this shameless low budget shocker exploits every myth you can think of about drugs, bookended by a lecture from a sombre-faced school principal.
The small group of kids who fall foul of the reefers don't have much of a life outside of their visits upstairs, and therefore their characters aren't rounded enough for us to care.Low budget and funny, this film is a true representative of its time..
Reefer Madness, the granddaddy of all midnight cult movies, is a classic on all counts.Let me start off by saying I don't smoke marijuana (or marihuina, as it is spelled in this movie) and I don't believe kids should be smoking pot, but this movie is so over the top in it's depiction of what happens when a person smokes the demon weed that it is hilarious.According to this film, which was made as an educational tool for parents in the 1930's, after just one hit off of a joint the smoker will turn into a wild eyed, deranged addict who will jump into bed with anyone, or become homicidal or suicidal.
If this film is to be believed, smoking a doobie will lead to permanent insanity!!!One classic scene shows two "hopheads" at a piano, while one screams, "Faster, Faster" as the other plays maniacally on the piano, reefer dangling from her lips.
Originally made as a 1930's propaganda film, it was meant to scare America 's youth away from drugs, showing them that one puff of the 'demon weed' turns teens into raving reefer addicts.
There are three very good reasons to watch this DVD: The colorization makes the bland visuals of this propaganda film bearable; the commentary track by members of the colorization team is informative and witty; and the other commentary track (by Mike Nelson of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000) allows the lone viewer to feel something of the effect of sitting in a room with a friend goofing on a movie.
******SPOILERS****** Originally titled "Tell Your Children: The Burning Question" the movie "Reefer Madness" was released as an educational film for Americas youth back in 1938 ironically a year after Marihuana, as it's spelled and pronounced in the movie, was made illegal in the United States.
It didn't take that long for us to find out just how dangerous it was after it being legal since the days of the Revolutionary War. George Washington himself, the father of our country, is said to have grown it.The movie over the years turned out to be one of the biggest reason for Americas youth getting hooked on drugs via Marijuana then were hooked on drugs by all the Columbian Drug Cartels put together.
If the movie was more accurate about Marijuana and how it's use can lead to more dangerous drugs it would have been more effective in warning Americas youths as well as adults about the risks of smoking it.
But the movie "Reefer Madness" message was just the opposite by telling those who watched it that Marijuana was more dangerous then Opium, Morphine and Heroin combined.The movie starts out with a forward on the dangers of "Marihuana" a violent narcotic and unspeakable scourge.
Were also told that we the American people must do our part in eradicating that scourge by educating our children about the terrible dangers of "Marihuana".Dr. Carroll tells the theater audience as well as the PTA group that he's addressing in the film about an event involving "Marihuana" that happened not too long ago in the town which they all live in.
Dr. Carroll tells us about a local group of young people who got caught up with smoking reefers which led to death insanity and suicide.In some of the most outrageous and funniest scenes ever put on film were shown drug parties with a stoned out piano player looking like an escapee from the movie "One Flew Over of the Cuckoo's Nest" and simulated sex among people with their clothes on that went as far as the censors back in those days would allow them to go.
The movie "Reefer Madness" by trying to be serious about the uses of Marijuana back in 1938 turned out to be one of the most funniest and unintentional comedies ever made..
I've just completed an undergraduate sociology study of the secular rituals associated with marijuana use, which involved questions on media sources seen as especially accurate/inaccurate.I watched this film as part of my research, and I generally agree that by all reasonable standards of "realistic" and "well-made", this film deserves no stars at all.However, its lasting importance to the American marijuana-centered sub-culture, as the most widely recognized example of a ludicrously inaccurate source, drives the rating a little higher.
(Unnatural extremes of acting were apparently the order of the day for the director, who was probably laughing while making this tripe, imagining that he was going to make a bundle off it eventually.) The frenzied piano scene while the ringleader Mae is puffing on a joint is also a crowd favorite.However, the deliciously weird dialogue is what really "sells" the film: nonsensical gems and "cautionary" pearls of wisdom abound.
Looking at it now of course, the film is pretty extreme in its depiction of the consequences but it does show the good side of drugs, the feelings that it gives you etc but the consequences for every user will not be as extreme as this film tries to portray as the norm for even an one-time casual user; like Bill Hicks said 'never robbed nobody, never shot nobody, never lost one single job.
Let's not forget though, that this is not a movie  it is an educational film and even today the production values and acting within educational films is still pretty dire; the last one I was a short film on confined space entry with William Shatner  hardly a piece of art!This film opens with hope  it starts with a discussion of the drugs as to their content and production; this is better than I expected.
Honestly, I have no idea how to rate this movie.It's a 1936 propaganda film about the dangers of marijuana.
They've got more energy than a spider monkey all hopped up on Mountain Dew. They are driving cars like madmen running into people, raping women, murdering, dancing all crazy to Jazz; the devil's music!The guy at the end smokes his joint and starts yelling at the girl to play the piano faster.
"Its first effect is sudden, violent, uncontrollable laughter.""Reefer Madness," "Tell Your Children," or all of the other titles it goes by, is a humorously absurd exaggeration of the effects of marijuana.
And the exaggerated depictions of marijuana here are camped up: among its "soul-destroying effects" being the incessant puffing and insufficient inhaling of the cigarettes, the maniacal laughter, the crazed piano playing, the sexual intoxication, the forgetting how to dance properly, hit-and-run speed driving, hallucinations and incurable insanity, jumping out windows and murdering your entire family with an axe, and the ability to bend bullets against all physical laws to hit someone in the back from another direction--not unlike "Wanted" (2008).
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.
Stealthily they are lured into all manner of deprivation and poor choices resulting in tragedy while the dealers cash in and skulk in their silken rat holes.Over the top, and in light of modern knowledge of marijuana usage by even the medical field, this film borders on the side of hilarity due to excessiveness of the stupidity of the victims and iciness of the dealers while hapless parents & teachers scramble for a solution.I recommend it for all to see, if anything as a time capsule view of the norms of the 1930s era of criminal, parent, educator, law enforcement and youth scramble around madly due to lowly reefer as the prime target of propaganda..
When the characters in this movie smoke marijuana, they react extremely, killing others, and acting completely insane.
This movie also portrays the use of reefer as an addictive act, and directly stresses that marijuana be kept away from our youth (as defined by a scene in which an adolescent school-boy smokes marijuana at an apartment jazz party, finds his girlfriend being taken advantage of by another man who is acting marijuana-crazed, and then gets blamed for shooting them).
Reefer Madness is a movie who's humor you will not fully understand in all its ridiculousness unless you are high or have at least smoked marijuana at some time in your life.
The irony exists in the expected results of the film as a scare tactic and the actual results of the movie which brought marijuana to the curiosity of the public masses and made the drug counter-culture more popular.
The report was held for reasons of national security for no reason because there was nothing substantial that would have made him a threat to anything.Although I do think that Reefer Madness is hilarious and I believe it is good that we can all find the humor in the movie, it is at the same time an embarrassment to see the wasted energy and corruption of an elected government that I believe the people of this country should be able to have confidence in and be able to believe in.
The acting is atrocious, the music is a joke and just like the other anti-marijuana films it is pure propaganda.
Besides the rather loose and fast rules about drugs (Calling marijuana more dangerous than heroin for example), the producers also tend to have difficulty with things like suspense and continuity.Perhaps the film was actually presenting that of an alternate reality, one in which marijuana really can drive a person nuts, not to the refrigerator.
In any event, "Reefer Madness" will definitely teach your children that it is made by people who clearly had very little information on their subject, or how to make a good movie..
What really surprised me the most about this 1936, low-budget expose revealing the menace of marijuana was to find out how prevalent pot smoking actually was amongst the American youth of the day.I mean, it was such an issue in the mid-1930s that it had reached the point of being a nationwide concern.With marijuana being labelled as "Public Enemy #1", this film's re-enactment of "real" events (taken from FBI files on delinquency, no less) were so bad that they were, more often than not, enjoyably entertaining and, yes, even funny (especially since this picture took its subject matter so dead-seriously).From marijuana turning even good girls bad, to attempted rape while under the influence, to hit'n'run recklessness, Reefer Madness's high-flying highlight was its star pothead, Ralph Wiley, who goes totally berserk after smoking one potent marijuana cigarette after another.You really have to see Dave O'Brien's laughable performance as Wiley for yourself to believe it.All-in-all - If you can appreciate Reefer Madness from a strictly nostalgic point of view, then I'm sure you'll find it to be worthwhile entertainment..
Dr. Carrol (as he refers to himself) tells us a story about an apartment near a nondescript high school where Mae Colman (along with her two "friends" Jack Smokes Too Much and Ralph Eats Too Much : a.k.a The Reefer Recruiters) "entertain".This is where this docu-drama turns into a peep show as we a watch a long shot of Mae putting on her stockings and a dress.
But remember, at the time this film was made people hadn't used marijuana like they do today.
That is until the boy gets involved with underground pot parties that turn him into a raving maniac.Better known as REEFER MADNESS, this 1936 film might be one of the worst ever made but it's also one of the most entertaining thanks in large part to its way too serious look at marijuana.
Rated PG for Drug Use,Some Violence and Brief Sexual Content.Tell Your Children aka Reefer Madness is an exploitation film from 1936.I have heard a lot about this film and I decided to check it out.I must say its one of, if not the worst movie I have ever seen.I hear its hilarious to watch when you are stoned.I've never smoked Marijuana but this movie would probably have been better if I was high.If you're wondering if this is one of those movies that are so bad their good, its not, its just plain bad.The film was originally made by a church group to show parents the dangers of marijuana use(very inaccurately I might add).This film was never seen again until the 1970's when it was shown, and considered a comedy among pot smokers.The only really funny parts about this movie come from the terrible acting.The acting in this film is horrible.I usually don't notice bad acting but this film stands out as one of those films with bad acting.The bad acting also may contribute to the fact that the people who made this film, did not know a thing about marijuana.First of all they misspell it marihuana in the film, secondly while I have never tried pot, I can tell you it doesn't give you the urge to rob banks or kill your family(as told in the film).Reefer Madness is basically unrealistic propaganda.The film is also pretty boring.Don't bother watching it, its not so bad its good, its just bad..
You might as well be stoned when you watch Wuthering Heights, Traffic or Gladiator, for all that matters.Misinformation would have to be if you think Reefer Madness is saying marijuana use will make you commit rape, murder or hit and run.
Reefer Madness probably led more people to use marijuana than any other promotion; indeed one almost has to be on drugs to appreciate this flick.
Watching it you're certainly struck by the lack of both internal continuity and internal logic of REEFER MADNESS and you often become confused as to what point the film is trying to make Take the opening foreword that claims marijuana is destroying the youth of America in increasingly large numbers because of its effects where time slows down and becomes fixed ...
Originally released in 1936 as an independent propaganda film, Reefer Madness (aka Tell Your Children) is in a more modern light extremely funny.
Many of the reviews that here comment on Reefer Madness, including the highlighted review, seem to be written by people under the mistaken impression that this movie was made as a "propaganda film," produced by a church or the government.
Jack, the drug dealer--who is never once even seen smoking marijuana in the movie--is the real villain.
It's a shame, though, as some who laugh at this film for its way over-statement of the effects of pot may think that drugs are okay--or even fun.
In fact, I would think drug abusers would LOVE this film because it might make them laugh at the idea that drugs can kill--after all, they might reason that if the movie is mostly a big lie about pot, maybe other drugs aren't so bad as well.