The 5 Most Anti-Marijuana Movies in Cinema History

From Hernán Panessi via El Planteo

Prejudices, strange looks and confusion: the cinema also served at times as a propagator for stigmatizing discourses. In fact, in 1934 in the United States (with the help of the major film studios) an official production code was created to determine what was and was not seen on screens.

Known as the Hays Code, regulated by the MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America), the American government and studios established a set of rules that would become a self-imposed censorship system that violated Hollywood’s natural style.

Photo by Nico De Pasquale Photography / Getty Images

Farewell to the carefree and farewell to freedom.

Since then, a number of films have turned their guns on marijuana users, sex, work organization, politics, and society. A certain worldview was poured.

In the same direction went the war on drugs, its business and its obsessions, followed by the abrupt actions of a Western society boiled in the heat of ignorance, cruel military dictatorships, censorship and oppression.

Here is a guide to the five most severely criminal films in history. These films, by act or omission, disregard implied obligations to the plausible and proceed without tact, without a clue, without anything that effectively resembles the experience of smoking a real joint.

The 5 anti-marijuana films in the history of cinema

5. Marijuana (Dwain Esper, USA, 1936)

In the midst of the financial crash of the 1930s, the big film studios were busy producing musicals, filming stories with classic literary monsters, distributing hilarious body comedies and producing everything else that made the “common people” forget that there was no bread and there were no jobs, but there was show business.

In this context, an early cannabis exploitation film was released which is known as the cornerstone of involuntary narcotics videos.

Despite an openly propagandistic discourse, marijuana, the biological sister of the classic film Chilling madness (1936), dared to put a few joints on the canvas.

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Marijuana was written to educate adult audiences. Why? This is how people could learn about “The Pitfalls of Youth in America” ​​(according to the trailer, just imagine the movie).

Also known as “Marihuana, the Weed with Root in Hell!” By the director Dwain Esper, has not only managed to point out a problem of the times, but also served as an inspiration to generate an enormous (and dark) cinematographic legacy. This was the beginning of a moral and biased cinema.

On the other hand, it became an inevitable stoner snack.

4. Youth Assassin (Elmer Clifton, USA, 1938)

Assassin of Youth, a child of the Hays Code, is an educational film that aims to warn against the use of marijuana. Like almost all films devoted to this subject, however, it showed insubordination, skins and disguises. The Hays office was happy.

In the name of education, one could see outlines of nudity, violence, and filth. The audience was also satisfied with the film.

Elmer Clifton and the aforementioned Dwain Esper, two private entrepreneurs outside the industry, gave the public what Hollywood couldn’t. They were a kind of involuntary Trojan horse: “Nobody should smoke, and that’s how you do it, by the way.”

In fact, Assassin of Youth tells the story of a student who gets involved with a group of cannabis smokers and begins a kitschy road to ruin. In between there is a melodramatic edition in which the “bad guys” get their reward and the “good guys” get their advantages.

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It starts off a bit boring, but turns out to be “good” (the quotes are as generous as they are fair). Because of this, it is considered a slightly more entertaining piece than the average marijuana movies of the 30s and 40s.

It is consistently anti-marijuana that even stands out against heroin and pills. Another feature film in the reefer madness subgenre that will make you laugh.

3. The Cool and the Crazy (William Witney, USA, 1958)

In the paranoid 1950s when Marlon Brando Synonymous with freedom and rebellion, and the capitalist / communist blocs debating world domination, a young marijuana salesman invades the unruly villains of a harsh Kansas City.

The Cool and the Crazy is a classic of the propaganda genre reefer madness: a rotten apple (the new bad boy in town) contaminates the rest of the box (the innocent local youth).

The goal of the film? Scare the youngsters of surrounding themselves with the “wrong people”. It’s like the boogeyman story, but for teenagers, don’t smoke or the boogeyman will come.

The plot is exaggerated: marijuana is a killer, it is the gateway to other narcotics, and a train is addictive for life (how could it not be?).

However, if these naive and exaggerated references can be ignored, then the cheesy juvenile delinquency hides an interesting script and cast.

The film remains a capsule of its time as it reflects certain youthful customs, hairstyles, the influence of contemporary idols like James Dean and Dick Jones, hot rods, cigarette smoking and other rebellious references in the beginning of the stormy 60s.

2. Marijuana (Hernán Garrido, Chile, 1975)

In Chile, during the Pinochet dictatorship, a documentary film brought the marijuana issue to the fore. As? By demonizing it to the utmost, how else?

“The stoner is bad,” repeats Marihuana, a deeply anti-drug film made by the Film Department (ok) in collaboration with the US Embassy (ok, ok). Yes, you read that right, no typo.

The short film, which experiments with different patients, aims to demonstrate the harmful effects of cannabis and LSD and to equate them on the same scale of values.

This creates images of police raids and dramatizations of psychedelic effects that unite all sorts of platitudes, spiced with ignorance about a number of topics.

With a lot of enthusiasm and with today’s eyes that can be seen as a mockery. Almost like one of Peter Capusotto’s videos.

1. Overdose (Fernando Ayala, Argentina, 1986)

If the body is a temple, then for Dani it is also a laboratory: amphetamines, sleeping pills, joints, acid, cocaine and heroin. Everything serves him to escape the life that he denies. And by the way, to find your own focus. The plot is typical: begins as a game and ends in the abyss.

In a kind of spiral tour de force, Dani evades parental mandates (his father is a professional who becomes president of a football club and his older brother follows him every step of the way) and enters an underworld that appeals to him much more: experimentation.

A “good kid” in an increasingly “hot” environment.

With journalistic research by Enrique Symns himself (monologues by Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota and creator of the mythical magazine Cerdos & Peces), music by the punk band Los Violadores and the exaggerated, cunning and guilty movements of the actor Federico Luppi, Sobredosis is an underground Film that approaches mainstream topics.

Beyond the somewhat predictable ending (if the main character gets really high, guess what happens to the child before the “end” sign) there is a surprising didactic for the time.

And while the message is supposed to be about morals, ethics, good manners, and family happiness, it inadvertently ends up being a misshapen display of chemical, narcotic, and psychotropic upsurges. Aimed for “A”, but achieved “Z”.