Drugs & Counterculture

Reefer Madness is a 1936 American propaganda film revolving around the melodramatic events that ensue when high school students are lured by pushers to try marijuana—from a hit and run accident, to manslaughter, suicide, attempted rape, hallucinations, and descent into madness due to marijuana addiction. The film was directed by Louis Gasnier and featured a cast of ...Read More

A Night Flight classic returns! J-Men is the story of "The Secret World War," a war of cultures as Rock & Roll smashes Shmaltzy music. This outrageous comedy was created by Firesign Theatre's Philip Proctor and Peter Bergman in the style of Woody Allen's "What's Up Tiger Lilly'" From a goldmine of Republic Cliffhanger Serials, J Men was overdubbed with new voices an...Read More

A real-life "Breaking Bad" for the psychedelic set, "The Sunshine Makers" reveals the untold story of Nicholas Sand and Tim Scully, the unlikely duo at the heart of the 1960s American drug counterculture. United in a utopian mission to save the planet through the consciousness-raising power of a form of LSD called "Orange Sunshine," "The Sunshine Makers" documents t...Read More

High Times presents Watermelon's Baked & Baking. Famous for her pot-focused family recipes, High Times "cover girl" Watermelon walks us through how to prepare and bake some very special treats in this one-of-a-kind cooking show, produced by Night Flight creator Stuart S. Shapiro in 2003.

In response to President Nixon's Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, adult filmmaker Alex de Renzy weighs in with Weed his take on "The Great American Grass Problem" in which he interviews customs agents and drug dealers, travels to Vietnam ("Just ask for Number One cigarettes!"), Cambodia (in search of "Cambodian Red"), and Nepal (where shops offer tourists "Be...Read More

A fine entry in the Stoner Slasher canon from director Dylan Reynolds. Five young women decide to celebrate a birthday by camping in a nearby national park over a weekend. However, their fun ends when they stumble on an illegal marijuana operation hidden and protected by a bloodthirsty maniac. "Whatever else can be said about “4/20 Massacre,” at least it lives up to...Read More

Before he relocated to Spain and made the gender-bender shocker I Hate My Body and a handful of Paul Naschy movies (including Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman), director LEON KLIMOVSKY shot this warped anti-pot thriller in his hometown of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Like earlier "warning" films which purported to tell the truth about marijuana abuse, Klimovsky's is naive...Read More

Buxom skin-goddess Pat Barrington (Mantis in Lace) is just one of The Acid Eaters a bunch of 9-to-5 working stiffs who become drug-crazed bikers on the weekend! After Miss Barrington kills a galpal in a catfight and the deceased inexplicably returns as a girlfriend for wacky artist Artie, the group enters a pyramid made of giant LSD sugar cubes which is also the ent...Read More

During the golden age of the roadshow, no exploiteer returned to the drug theme more often that DWAIN ESPER. After the infamous short Sinister Menace and the feature-length Narcotic (both 1933), Esper and his screenwriter wife, HILDAGARDE STADIE, unleashed Marihuana, the first of the famous trilogy of anti-pot films of the 1930's which included Reefer and Assassin o...Read More

Newspaper headlines denounce a rash epidemic of barbiturate overdoses. Even more shocking is that the abusers are juveniles out for cheap kicks. Responding to the rising public outrage, a prominent female judge sends young detective Sergeant Dave Kerrigan to uncover the source of the dangerous contraband. His dogged search leads to a crooked weight-loss "gym" whe...Read More

This engaging documentary profiles the beat generation legend, whose powerful way with words influenced the countercultural movement. Scored by Patti Smith and Sonic Youth. A Man Within features never-before-been-seen archival footage of Burroughs, as well as exclusive interviews with colleagues and confidants such as David Cronenberg, John Waters, Laurie Anderson, ...Read More

Beyond The Valley Of The Doll’s David Gurian is among the victims of Drugs & Alcohol in Classroom Scare-Film "A Crutch For All Seasons." A 1960's scare film portrays real-life situations where young people become addicted to marijuana and drug use or alcohol use. The destructive effects of drugs and alcohol are demonstrated.

Something happened alright! It was like a bolt of cultural lightning that split the decade - and America itself - in two. It was a radical change In music, fashions, sensibtlity and politics that separated and polarized generations. It was the birth of Add Culture, Free Love, and the Anti-War Movement. It was sex and drugs and sitar, flower power, free clinics, and ...Read More

At the height of the Bush administration, Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong was charged with selling bongs over the internet and sentenced to nine months in federal prison. As part of the government's $12 million 'Operation Pipe Dreams' drug paraphernalia sting operation, Chong, a vocal opponent of Bush's handling of the War on Terror, was singled out among 55 defenda...Read More

Even now -- maybe especially now -- Woodstock has deep, lasting meaning. Its mix of music, culture and idealism resonates across the years. It gave youth a voice. It changed the music business. It energized activists. From stadium shows to social-justice movements, its legacy is strong: half a century later. Follow the inside story of the event and the history that ...Read More

The fun and fascinating story of harvesting, cultivation and smuggling of marijuana in America.

In Alice in Acidland (1969), a wholesome college student succumbs to the temptations of marijuana and becomes a dope-crazed sexual omnivore until she hits rock bottom after taking the plunge into LSD.

"A far-out trip thru a hard rock tunnel!" Take three hot-to-trot groupies, mix well with the seventies L.A. rock scene, add plenty of sex, drugs and violence and watch as it all explodes.

Catnip is all the rage with today’s modern feline, but do we really understand it? Is it a source for harmless kicks, or a potentially crippling addiction? Is it a tool to expand one’s consciousness, or a downward spiraling path that can eventually lead to insanity? Once and for all the facts about this controversial substance are frankly discussed, in the long-lost...Read More

Rudy Ray Moore is Tucker Williams, the rapping owner and main attraction of the Blueberry Hill Disco. An ex-cop with a penchant for head-whacking martial arts, Tucker is called back into action when his nephew (Julius J. Carry III) get hooked on angel dust. Aided by the cool sensibilities of his “Gal Friday” Noel (Carol Speed-The Mack, Abbey), Tucker declares wa...Read More

NIGHT FLIGHT PLUS EXCLUSIVE. Cocaine Cowboys, released in 1979, was directed by German director Ulli Lommel (Blank Generation) and was one of the early films distributed theatrically by Night Flight creator Stuart Shapiro’s International Harmony. Filmed on Andy Warhol's Montauk Estate (and featuring Warhol himself), Cocaine Cowboys stars Tom Sullivan and Jack Palanc...Read More

With World War II raging in Europe, roadshow shockers all but faded from the exploitation scene… with Devil’s Harvest one of the few exceptions, and doing its patriotic duty by warning Americans everywhere to stay vigilant against the Menace of Marijuana, specifically the peddling of marijuana to high-school kids. “Here, before us, in peace and tranquility, stands o...Read More

Hippies! Incest! High-School Hookers! Drug parties! lesbians! Free-love! Suicide! And. .. well, psychiatry. Put it all together - with an especially heavy hand - and you’ve got The Wild Scene, a cinematic stew of sex and sociology that gleefully exploits the most overused phrase of the late-sixties," the generation gap" ("It’s more than a gap, it’s a void") with a v...Read More

While drunk driving is dangerous, did educational films teach school kids the importance of using mixers, the glamour of beach party beers and the entertainment value in drunk divers? Randy Jones, the Original Cowboy of the Village People explores these wicked lessons.

Hunter S. Thompson meets Barry McKenzie in this dark nonfiction comedy about a real-life, legendary but down-and-out tabloid television journalist who heads to Hawaii to film a marijuana travel series, only to become lost in a fog of drugs, sex and paranoia as he uncovers a secret government war to control the marijuana trade. The film touches on the controversial f...Read More

Since 1983, acclaimed international cannabis cultivation writer Jorge Cervantes has sold over 500,000 copies of his book Indoor Marijuana Horticulture, while contributing common sense advice about marijuana growing to dozens of publications including a monthly Q+A column in HIGH TIMES. Now, for the first time, the worlds ultimate ganja guide brings his expertise to...Read More

Here’s an odd but nonetheless fascinating time capsule of late- Sixties social unrest filtered through the mind of Florida-based sexploitation producer-director HARRY KERWIN. Yup, the man who made Strange Rampage, My Third Wife George, and Girls Come Too - and who was also the brother of Blood Feast star Bill Kerwin ­ wanted to tap into the same youth market compani...Read More

Sal Mineo narrates the Psychedelic Truth about Acid in Classroom Scare-Film, LSD: Insight Or Insanity! Documentary about the potentially dangerous and unpredictable drug LSD. Various experts discuss how LSD is made and the hazards involved in using it while avid users explain why they enjoy taking it. The life of the typical teen in the late 1960s is presented, wit...Read More

"War babies. They want to be different. They don't want to belong to any mass society. They have their own-type clubs, their own 'in' groups." Thus Malamondo, an elegant look at early-Sixties' teenage angst and "way out youth," Euro-style, set to the delirious musical musings of a young ENNIO MORRICONE! "Teenage swingers" ski in the nude in the Swiss Alps! (Skinn...Read More

After releasing the exploitation, sexploitation, and even kiddie films of one-man film-industry BARRY MAHON, Something Weird has finally found one of his two "lost" rock movies, Musical Mutiny starring IRON BUTTERFLY, a wacky little hippie fantasy which hasn’t been seen since its theatrical release way back in 1970. And, of course, with Mr. Mahon at the helm, it's a...Read More

Of all the filmmakers who toiled in the world of exploitation, no one made films as consistently rude, offensive, and jaw-droppingly outrageous as roadshow pioneer DWAIN ESPER, the man who made Maniac (1934) and Marijuana (1936). Written by Mrs. Esper, HILDEGARDE STADIE (who allegedly based the main character on an opium-smoking uncle), and filled with enough plot f...Read More

Although it was made in 1936, Reefer Madness didn't become a cult hit until 1972 when the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) rescued it from the Library of Congress film archive. Thereafter, it was a mainstay on the midnight movie circuit. And it's easy to see why. The ostensible story involves a group of upstanding young high school stud...Read More

“The Film That’s Scorchin’ The Nation’s Screens!” The She who Shoulda Said ‘No’! is honeypot LILA LEEDS (Lady in the Lake, Moonrise) who was busted for doing doobies with rugged Robert Mitchum just months before this updated upgrade of Reefer Madness. Cashing in on the notoriety of “The Screen’s Newest Blonde Bomb,” KROGER BABB, “America’s Fearless Showman,” ...Read More

In Smoke and Flesh (1968), a groovy pot party takes a dangerous turn as a shifty pusher turns on the revelers with LSD, leading to a seriously bad trip for all concerned.

Beatniks? What beatniks? Two-bit punks, a closet rock-&-roll star, and an out-of-his-mind psycho: yes. Beatniks: no. Though The Beatniks was probably a last-minute title change to replace a less exploitable moniker, it didn’t make much of a difference to the audiences of 1960. After all, to a world emerging from the Eisenhower era, bohemian artists and beat-generati...Read More

Not a lot is known about this exploitation clip-collage which examines the classic marijuana scare-films of the 1920s through the 1940s. However, the year of release, tone of the narration, and the complete lack of credits indicate that The Devil's Joint may well have been some kind of underground film. After all, it was released around the time when vintage drug fi...Read More

Originally titled Electric Shades of Grey (the on-screen title of SWV's pristine print), The Psychedelic Priest is a real rarity from the tail end of the hippie movement. According to cinematographer (and unbilled co-director) WILLIAM GREFE, the producer raised the film's budget by promoting trading stamps (!), and the shooting schedule demanded a certain amount of ...Read More

The tranquility of Uncle No Rules’s home is disturbed when a mysterious variety-show equipped with a studio audience and charismatic host (Marky Ramone) descends upon the household. Uncle No Rules must awkwardly participate in unscripted toy unboxing demonstrations, cooking segments, and slime-making tutorials with the hopes that the show might finally come to a con...Read More