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Reefer Madness
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Like the reefer that is so addictive to the film's characters, Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical is a film musical fans will find themselves returning to again and again. It's precisely the sort of thing that could develop into a cult favorite.
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The material notwithstanding, Reefer Madness includes some fine performances. Gregg Edelman is near perfect as the tightly-wound narrator, gamely dressing up to play everything from Jimmy's aging mother to a parish priest with a brogue. Also exceptional are Michelle Pawk, Erin Matthews and Kristen Bell. Robert Torti is suitably scuzzy in both of his roles. Christian Campbell is less successful, leaving much on the table in both pre- and post-weed depictions. John Kassir's Ralph is two-dimensional, although he redeems himself mightily in one of the show's funniest bits, as Sally's Baby.
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The single funniest number in "Reefer Madness" comes as a result of Jimmy trying to steal the money from a church's offering box. While standing at the altar, trying to crack the lock on the box, the incense inspires a divine vision: a full-on production number from none other than the holiest of hosts himself, Jesus Christ, played with smarmy perfection by Robert Torti. It's the centerpiece of the movie, mixing the excess of a '70s variety show with a Vegas lounge act. (Example: Jesus comes off a cross lit by fluorescent lights and struts around wearing gold lame boots.) Plus, it has lyrics that rhyme "shroud of Turin" with "do I need to test your urine" and a chorus so catchy that even an atheist will find himself singing it for weeks.
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In 1971, Reefer Madness was discovered in the Library of Congress archives by NORML founder Keith Stroup, who bought a print for $297, and made it the darling of pot smokers and college campuses. For this modern audience the poor production values and overacting create an uproarious comedy. Stroup is ... responsible for the notion that the film was originally created as a propaganda piece. Distributing Reefer Madness to college campuses of the 1970s helped bankroll the burgeoning film company New Line Cinema.[1][3] On the other hand, in 1973 a young Karl Rove, then on his way to becoming the chairman of the College Republicans, suggested (in a memorandum to president Nixon's counselor Anne Armstrong) showing nonpolitical films for fund-raising (e.g. John Wayne flicks, ‘Reefer Madness’) at College Republican clubs as part of a strategy to raise support for the Republican party among students.[8]
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The original, mocking "Reefer Madness" film was created out of a 1936 propaganda film. The musical was created by Dan Studney and Kevin Murphy in 2001 (and became a Showtime movie in 2005).
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If the idea of making a musical out of Roger Corman's Z-movie quickie The Little Shop of Horrors sounded weird, stick around for the all-singing, all-dancing Reefer Madness. Deliriously based on the notorious 1936 anti-pot social-guidance film, this is an ultra-campy enterprise that lands somewhere between Rocky Horror and a John Waters comedy. Christian Campbell and the spritzy Kristen Bell play the innocent teens lured into a soul-sapping cloud of marijuana dependence by pencil-mustached pusher Steven Weber and his long-suffering dame, Ana Gasteyer. The cast includes femme fatale Amy Spanger and a cameo by Neve Campbell, who dances her way through one sequence. The musical was written and composed by Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney, who re-create some of the kookiest scenes from the original movie ("Faster! Faster!").
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Reefer Madness