Marihuana
Marihuana is a 1936 film from the USA, directed by Dwain Esper, running 57 minutes. reelscum files it under classical exploitation.
- Year
- 1936
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 57 min
- Director
- Dwain Esper
- Updated
- 10 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (44/100)
- Also known as
- Marihuana, the Weed with Roots in Hell! · Marijuana
Defined in the glossary: Classical exploitation
Esper again. One reefer leads directly to nude swimming and death.
Dwain Esper again, working the drug-panic angle with his usual disregard for craft or truth. One reefer at a beach party leads directly to nude swimming, addiction, kidnapping and death, and the film pads its scant story with dire warnings and a square-up promising to educate parents. The moralising is a fig leaf for the sensation.
Like Esper's other films, it survives as an artifact of the roadshow racket rather than as a movie, its lurid promises never quite delivered. It is cheap, crude and instructive about the era's business.
For students of exploitation's roots, not for entertainment.
Trailer
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Legal options in USA
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The cycle in depth
- The grindhouse and where the word came from
What a grindhouse is: a continuous-performance theatre, the 1925 trade term behind the word, and how the programming got its reputation.
- The B movie and the double bill it was made for
A B movie is what an exhibitor took to get the A picture, a flat-rate second feature, and the 1948 Paramount ruling ended the arrangement.
Filed alongside
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Reefer Madness
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White Zombie
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Häxan
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Freaks
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