Saw Reefer Madness (1931), the original film that all the musicals and whatnot were based on. It was very campy. It follows a small group of teenagers who fall in with a Bad Crowd. That is: smokers of the terrible drug spelled marihuana. The teenagers begin smoking the evil stuff and react in the typical manner of the dope fiend: hilarious laughing, close-ups of swiveling eyeballs, writhing and gibbering, also murder.
The film is so over the top, so full of pearl-clutching horror and completely inaccurate portrayals of weed smoking that you can't help but lapse into the same old-timey cadence. It's hilarious! The film invites a lot of participation and, at one hour long, feels like a good appetizer to a party, but the subject is very overwrought. It ends with several deaths and some very hysterical dames. The plot is very grim in a morality tale kind of way, so I felt bad making fun of it in my head, but once the terrible tale is fully told, it's a joy to imitate, to froth at the mouth at something so relatively tame. I can see why this film became a cult classic. I imagine it's not even that fun to watch high, it's just fun to play along with the film, to be aghast at teenagers, necking (necking!) while demonic, jolly piano music plays!
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