Nr 457: Reefer Madness! (1998)

Reefer Madness!
1998: Los Angeles
2001: Off-Broadway
2005: Tv-version
2009: London

Music: Dan Studney
Lyrics: Kevin Murphy
Book: Kevin Murphy based on the 1936 film Reefer Madness

Creeping like a communist it’s knocking at our doors
Turning all our children into hooligans and whores
Voraciously devouring the way things are today
Savagely deflowering the good ol’ USA
It’s… Reefer madness! Reefer madness!

As the play opens, an evangelical lecturer addresses an audience which is supposedly composed of concerned parents. His goal is to warn them of a new menace that is sweeping the nation, a leafy green assassin ready to ensnare and seduce the youth and drag them down into a life of sin: marijuana.
He starts to tell the true story of the Harper Affair: 15 year old Jimmy Harper, was a fine, upstanding, clean-cut, All-American boy whose life fell apart because of the evil reefer. Jimmy was a good kid, with a bright future ahead of him. He had a sweetheart whom he loved, the wholesome and sweet Mary Lane. But when Jimmy is tricked into taking his first puff of reefer, his life quickly spirals downward. He begins to neglect his family, his schoolwork, even Mary, in order to spend all his time smoking at the Reefer Den. His addiction leads him to evil jazz music, dance, debauchery, sin, theft, violence and, eventually, murder. Along the way he also meets Jesus, the devil, some zombies, a cannibalistic, constant giggling manic dope fiend, an angel, some overly friendly inmates at the local penetentuary who just want to take a shower with him and a surprise visit from president Franklin D. Roosevelt…
On top of all that he also finds time to recite a little Shakespeare!
What’s not to like?
It’s a musical filled with camp, hilarity, mayhem, and madness.

Detta är en riktigt underhållande och grymt kul musikal med smittande musik. Jag är oerhört förtjust i den och har lite svårt att fatta att den inte har blivit kult. När den spelades i Los Angeles i originaluppsättningen så blev det lite ”Rocky Horror” varning på den för folk såg föreställningen om och om igen och klädde ut sig till sina favvofigurer och lärde sig replikerna etc. 
Men i New York så las den ner rätt fort och filmversionen är nog relativt bortglömd. Men om ni kan hitta DVDn så köp den direkt. Ni får en galen musikal med stora shownummer, catchiga låtar, absurd och garanterat icke-PK handling, ”over the top” skådespeleri från väldigt bra skådisar, lite sex, lite våld och ni får, som bonus, även originalfilmen från 1936 som musikalen är baserad på. 

Musiken är en blandning av rock, swing, jazz, gospell och musikalpasticher. Det finns några stora skillnader mellan scenversionens musik och den i filmen, man bytte bl a ut några sånger och skrev om andra. Men jag gillar bägge versionerna.

Kuriosa:
The film from 1936 was originally made as Tell Your Children and sometimes titled as The Burning Question, Dope Addict, Doped Youth, and Love Madness but is best known as Reefer Madness.
Originally the film was produced as a warning to parents about the use of cannabis, the film was later recut by Dwain Esper and gained notoriety as an education-exploitation film, the typically low-budget genre known for excessively hyping trends and news through lurid and trashy scenes intended to be more entertaining than enlightening. Over the years, some of these films have been artistic or revolutionary enough to become culturally significant, such as Night of the Living Dead. However, Reefer Madness has been declared the worst film ever made; Leonard Maltin gave it zero out of four stars, calling it “the granddaddy of all ‘worst’ movies.”

Christian Campbell som spelar Jimmy i filmen spelade samma roll redan i originaluppsättningen i Los Angeles.
Han är storebror till Neve Campbell som spelade huvudrollen i alla 4 Screamfilmerna. Hon är också med i denna musikalfilm. Man tyckte det var så kul att kunna ha med bägge syskonen i filmen att man skrev om en av rollerna så man kunde casta henne i den. 

Videosar:
Trailer for the original 1936 Reefer Madness film.
Trailer for the movie musical Reefer Madness from 2005
Title song with Alan Cumming
Little Mary Sunshine with Kristen Bell
Listen To Jesus Jimmy
Jimmy Takes a Hit/The Orgy
The Truth – Finale

   
Filmaffisch.