Watch Tell Your Children For Free

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Oh my gosh, my post-war generation was still under the influence of this tripe and believed one puff would ruin a lifetime. No wonder the 60's generation talked about a credibility gap as they puffed away. This is a bad movie highlighted by the ridiculous, and no one in front of the camera or behind seems to care. Do the producers really believe this burlesque. Or maybe they're shilling for the liquor lobby then regaining its post-Prohibition popularity, or maybe the plastics lobby worried about the manufacturing possibilities of hemp oil. In a way, it's too bad the movie comes across now as a joke. Pot may not be the Devil's brew, but it does dull awareness, and in that sense remains a risk. So hyping the effects has had a reverse effect that also needs to be considered. Nonetheless, the movie's smug authorities from school principal to courtroom judge to official narrator are enough to get me to light up and puff away. Plus they're not even good for a laugh.

Ever since marijuana (aka pot, weed, grass, puff, Mary Jane, Bob Marley) was banned in the United States, the opponents to this ruling argue that marijuana really has no harmful affect on the human body other than being the equivalent of 4 Nyquil pills (or something like that). Well now you can shut those people up by showing them Reefer Madness an anti drug PSA that was made in the 30s, that actually raises more questions than it answers. With the evil maniacal story of these gangsters that gave the new evil drug to innocent teenagers that made them do horrible things like, run over old men on the streets who shouldn't have been there anyway, or laugh at things that nobody else is. These and many others are the basis that Reefer Madness uses to support it's argument. Reefer Madness is a film so exaggerated that it doesn't even feel serious. I know this was a different time but even in the 1930s this seemed over playing it. If you're a police officer looking for a good PSA to show kids then you'll have to look somewhere else. But if you're looking for a movie to make fun of, then Reefer Madness is a good choice.

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.

"Reefer Madness" describes marijuana as "the new drug menace, which is destroying the youth of America". And you would think that this might just be a hyperbolic tagline on an anti-drug poster, but the filmmakers back that up with an alarmingly earnest sense of paranoia and hysteria. They're serious. As an unintentional comedy, "Reefer Madness" takes its time getting going. The dialogue of these unrelatable characters is peppered with the usual "swell"s, "gee"s, etc. of the time. The real fun occurs when the wretched mary jane rears its ugly head. Pretty soon, those evil pushers have gotten our upright moral youth speeding off after a vehicular homicide, raping young girls, shooting people, window-diving, and descending into general madness. And then they listen to that risqué jazz music!It's not hard to see why this movie's a cult classic. It's absurd in its warnings, firebrand in its portrayals, and undeniably goofy. But that's how it comes off now. I really do wonder how effective this movie was in what seems like the original "Just Say No" campaign. Did people take this seriously? Judging from the continuation of such dire warning movies as "Boys Beware" [1961] (extolling the dangers of homosexuals), it'd be easy to conclude so. And that just makes this all the more amusing.A 7/10 on the ridiculous scale