Talk:Reefer Madness/Archive 1

Removed sarcasm
removed:


 * -- the usual things that can be expected from a single joint.

(not sure how to mark it specifically as sarcasm for readers who arent familiar with effects)

Changed text
Somebody must've been lighting up when they wrote that "The smoke from the "marihuana" was grossly colorized to obscene colors ranging from green, red, blue, orange, and even purple smoke," so I made it a bit more neutral. --216.165.60.246 03:26, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC) (AKA Wasabe3543 not logged in...)

I think this should be split into several articles and a disambig. But maybe that's just me. It just looks uncitely like this: a handful of stubs thrown together. LockeShocke 22:33, May 7, 2005 (UTC)


 * It is a bit (and could use some tidying), but since any use of the name "Reefer Madness" can only be a reference to the original movie and invariably implies a work deeply inspired by it, it probably does make more sense as one article. btw I quite like the word "uncitely" and will undoubtedly steal it for use in a different context (but you'll understand that crediting you as the inadvertent coiner would be much too ironic even for my taste). toh 22:12, 2005 May 30 (UTC)

I agree, i think it should be split into REEFER MADNESS (1936 Film), Reefer Madness (1998 book), Reefer Madness (2003 Book), Reefer Madness (2003 Movie), Reefer Madness (song), and Reefer Madness (musical). and have Reefer Madness folward to Reefer Madness (Disambiguation) --ThrashedParanoid 8 July 2005 04:34 (UTC)

420
420 (drug culture) claims "In the 1936 anti-pot classic "Reefer Madness", there is a brief subliminal flash showing 4:20 with a marijuana leaf in the background." Is this true? Trollderella 20:27, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * This was a special effect added to the colorized version. It wasn't in the original release of the film. (Ibaranoff24 02:34, 10 December 2005 (UTC))


 * Actually it doesn't flash 420, in the chapter "Bill gets a taste for the reefer". It flashes the number 240.  If someone was on reefer, they may have wanted to see the number 420.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 63.3.10.129 (talk) 04:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC).

stub?
why is it marked as a stub? seems rather complete...

also... it says it was made in 1936, and written by paul franklin. but when you follow the link to "paul franklin" it takes you to some musician born in the 1950's... 69.109.191.215 (talk) 05:36, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Real or a Prop?
Does anyone know what they used for the weed in the movie?


 * Probably regular tobacco cigarettes. (Ibaranoff24 23:41, 29 March 2006 (UTC))

Purple Smoke
"The color version features intentionally unrealistic color schemes that add to the film's unintentionally campy humor. The smoke from the "marijuana" was made to appear green, red, blue, orange, and even purple..."

Doesn't this sentence suggest that purple is somehow a stranger color for marijuana smoke to be than any of the other colors?

I'm confused
Don't a few of these paragraphs contradict? Was it actually purchased by the exploitation filmmaker and distributed on the exploitation circuit, or was it a morality tale? Happy Holidays, by the way.


 * It was originally produced as an ill-informed morality tale by a church group who knew very little about the actual effects of marijuana use, and was later purchased by Dwain Esper, who recut the film to distribute on the exploitation circuit as Reefer Madness. The article makes this very clear. (Ibaranoff24 05:39, 27 April 2006 (UTC))

Wikiquote
I finally got around to cleaning up the Wikiquote page on this film. I still haven't organized the quotes in the order they first appeared in the film, though. But have a look! :) (Ibaranoff24 05:30, 18 June 2006 (UTC))

Church group
Can anyone identify the church group who commissioned the movie? None of the articles I see on the web mention its name. Coyoty 16:50, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

POV
"The claims that Reefer Madness was produced as an exploitation film, thinly veiled as an educational piece to comply with the Hays code are untrue.[citation needed] Though it is true that lesser-known films such as Esper's own Marihuana and Elmer Clifton's Assassin of Youth were/are exploitation, Reefer Madness is merely a misguided (and highly inaccurate) morality tale."

This seems rather like someone giving a definitive opinion on the subject, and doesn't back itself up very well. Should it be clarified, reworded, or deleted? --Moncubus 16:28, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I removed the sentence, "'Reefer Madness' is the best example of propaganda that was used to give false information to the public on the effects of marijuana," as it is an unbacked POV statement.Ratiuglink (talk)

Copyright
"'For this reason, neither Esper nor the original filmmakers bothered to copyright the film, and it eventually fell into the public domain.'"

I accept that my question is not of central importance to this article but..... In Australia copyright vests in a work upon its creation, no registration is necessary. I had thought this the case in the US too. How and why then, would one "copyright the film". Avalon 12:19, 14 January 2007 (UTC)


 * That's been the case in the U.S. since about 1978 (when the U.S. started "harmonizing its copyright regime" with international treaties), but wasn't previously... AnonMoos (talk) 19:59, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Alternate Titles, Later Distribution?
Although the article references the original title as Tell Your Children, a comment on Amazon.com says "The original title is 'Tell Your Children.' aka Dope Addict (1938), aka Doped Youth (1938), aka Love Madness (1938), aka Burning Question, The (1939), aka Reefer Madness (1947). ".  Indeed, my copy  has a "Doped Youth" titlecard. Also, the article says, "After a brief run, the film lay forgotten for several decades." Unless the "brief run" lasted 11 years under 6 titles, the article is missing something here. HalJor 04:37, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I added a bit on the reissue titles. (Ibaranoff24 17:14, 27 May 2007 (UTC))

Trivia in the references section
Can some one clean up the references section and remove the trivia? 12.192.9.22 (talk) 07:36, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

False Claims Against Marijuana
I noticed in the article there is no mention of all the false claims the film makes about the effects of marijuana. Marijuana is not adictive or a halucinagenic (sp?). Everything Dr. Carrol says in the begining, all the 'facts', are by today's standards flagrant lies. Shouldn't there be a section in the article about the scare tactics the movie tried to use by lying about the effects of smoking marijuana? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.118.191.19 (talk) 17:09, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction
The History section begins by saying that the film "was financed by a church group and intended to be shown to parents as a morality tale". But two paragraphs later, it says that NORML founder Keith Stroup "is... responsible for the notion that the film was originally created as a propaganda piece." Unless someone thinks that a "morality tale" and a "propaganda piece" are two different things in this context, this is a direct contradiction and I'm tagging it accordingly. Either the movie was intended that way or the idea that it was was something that Stroup made up. (I wonder how the person who wrote the sentence about Stroup thinks the film was intended, or what that sentence was intended to mean.)

--208.76.104.133 (talk) 11:15, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I believe that this was added by an anon. Removed. (Ibaranoff24 (talk) 05:57, 24 January 2009 (UTC))

Foul!
Quote: In one of the camera shots taking place before it is revealed that Mary has been "shot in the back," the gun is aimed at the floor, one of the film's most revealing mistakes.

Untrue, actually. In the movie you can clearly see that the gun is levelled when it goes off. Maikel (talk) 15:47, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Melodramatic
Melodramatic effects? Is that used as a pejorative term? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:540:C400:8C80:113D:F08A:4ABE:2C0C (talk) 20:57, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

External links modified
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Putting it in documentary category
This may surprise you, but I think it belongs there. It’s a terrible documentary, one of the worst ever made, but that’s the genre it belongs to. We might today call it fiction, or even comedy, but that’s not how it was presented or seen at the time. deisenbe (talk) 17:09, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Why public domain?
Neither this article, nor the linked source, explains why the copyright on the original film was invalid (just that "The film carried an improper copyright notice"). I think the article needs to explain what was wrong with the notice and why that meant the film wasn't copyrighted. Iapetus (talk) 12:00, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
 * It is explained in List_of_films_in_the_public_domain_in_the_United_States. Could link to this. -- Green  C  17:31, 5 March 2019 (UTC)