Classroom Scare Films: Drug Horrors
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From Something Weird Video: During the Great White Suburban Drug Scare of the late sixties / early seventies, parents, educators, and corporate sponsors banded together in an effort to scare American teens away from getting high. It might be argued that the weird and often hysterical propoganda films that emerged from this era created more drug abuse than they prevented. Nevertheless, here’s a handful of Classroom Scare Films from a groovy by-gone era that will fascinate and entertain you from beginning to end... Featuring Featuring Weed, Ups / Downs, and more.
Marihuana Story
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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 naively wrong-headed wrongheaded from the get-go. However, viewers expecting a Reefer Madness-style camp classic will be sorely disappointed. Substitute heroin or crack fro the dreaded weed and the situations depicted in The Marihuana Story suddenly become no laughing matter.
Tomcats
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When four degenerate thugs rape and murder a young waitress in part of their rape and murder spree, they are arrested, but get away with though a legal technicality. The brother of one of the rape/murder victims decides to become vigilante and kill the four degenerates by himself.
Girl Gang
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Under the influence of a gangster, a group of impressionable teenage girls agree to commit robberies and prostitute themselves for drugs.
Anatomy of a Psycho
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The crazed brother of a condemned killer sent to the gas chamber swears vengeance on those he holds responsible for his brother's execution.
Night of the Cat
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A woman transforms herself into a black-clad, karate-chopping vigilante and strikes back at the gangsters who killed her sister.
She Should'a Said No!
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“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,” promoted the film as “The Story of Lila Leeds and Her Expose of the Marijuana Racket!” (She’s even costumed in the same suit she wore when she was sentenced with Mitchum!)
The Devil's Joint
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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 films like the 1936 Reefer Madness were being rediscovered by a new generation via midnight screenings at smoke-filled theaters and college universities.
The tone here is cleverly set from the opening text which informs us that the film has been made without the cooperation of the Whit House, FBI, or local police authorities. In case you still didn't get the hint, The Devil's Joint then shows us a clip of TICHARD NIXON stating that he is here to tell us the truth despite his honesty and integrity being under question, before cutting to grisly newsreel footage of Chinese opium users being executed in the 1930s. What follow is essentially a series of extended clips from a number of the most notorious roadeshow drugsploitation films including Reefer Madness (of course), as well as a silent film from the 1920s called The Pace That Kills
For the most part, the film wisely lets these clips speak for themselves, although a narrator does give us a quick rundown of all the propaganda clichés used in the drug scare genre, and during sequences which depict stoned people fighting, Batman-style "Pows!" and "Zaps!" flash across the screen. Occasionally, silent-movie-style text cards pop up displaying lurid pulp blurbs like "An Innocent young virgin under the spell of the Killer Weed! Will she fall prey to man's lust?"
Teenage Mother
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Before he became known for distributing such drive-in epics as I Drink Your Blood, I Eat Your Skin, and I Spit on Your Grave, JERRY GROSS directed two fascinating little quickies - Girl on A Chain Gang (’65) and Teenage Mother (’67) - that are textbook examples of classic old-school exploitation. In fact. shot-on-Long-Island Teenage Mother seems to take its inspiration from a half dozen old roadshow films, updated for the Sixties, and even concludes with that oldest of exploitation standbys, authentic birth-of-a-baby footage!
Invaders From Space
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The evil salamander men have poisoned Earth with a plague, and it is up to Starman to save mankind.
Retro Christmas Classics: Volume 2
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Ring in the holidays with nostalgic Christmas-themed theatre intermissions, weird cartoons, creepy stop-motion animation, and, brace yourself, Liberace! These hand-picked classics from Something Weird Video are sure to delight, disturb and put you in the spirit of the season.
Hollywood Babylon
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A faux cautionary documentary that portrays several notorious celebrity sex scandals from the golden age of Hollywood through film clips and often humorous softcore reenactments.
NFTV 3
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