- Year
- 1936
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 66 min
- Director
- Louis J. Gasnier
- Updated
- 9 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- known (26/100)
- Also known as
- Dope Addict · Doped Youth · Love Madness · The Burning Question · Reefer Madness · Reefer Madness: Tell Your Children
Reefer Madness
A church-funded warning that became a comedy 40 years later.
A church-financed cautionary film about the horrors of marijuana, which went nowhere on release and was rediscovered in the 1970s to become an accidental comedy classic. Wholesome teenagers try a single joint and descend immediately into madness, manslaughter and ruin, played with a hysterical sincerity that is now hilarious.
It survives entirely as camp, a monument to drug-panic propaganda so overheated it loops into entertainment. Its afterlife as a midnight movie is far larger than its original life.
Terrible on purpose in ways its makers never intended, and funny for it.
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