Monday, September 15, 2008

Stop the [Reefer] Madness!

Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical. Dir. Andy Fickman. Perf. Kristen Bell, Christian Campbell, and Alan Cumming. 2005. DVD. Showtime, 2005.
The 1936 film Reefer Madness (a.k.a. Tell Your Children, directed by Louis J. Gasnier, Mill Creek Entertainment, 2007) became a cult classic in the 1970s. I suppose the term "cautionary tale" fits this film exactly. Smoking Marijuana and reading Romeo and Juliet prove dangerous—nay, fatal—in this documentary-style exposé on drug and Shakespeare use. [Note: I approve of the latter (viz. Shakespeare use) while despising the former (viz. drug use).]

The world had to wait until 2005 for the movie version of the musical version of Reefer Madness. The film is uneven, but this song, sung by the naïve 1930s-style teenagers is brilliant.
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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

 —The Tempest