DVDs: Demon Weed
The 1938 low-budget film Reefer Madness was meant to warn the public of the need to educate youth about the drug menace, in particular the evils of marijuana. But because of its stilted acting and its teenagers who turn into hysterical dope fiends after a single puff, Reefer Madness is now regarded as a camp classic, a cultish midnight movie.
With music by Dan Studney, lyrics by Kevin Murphy, and a book by both, Reefer Madness was turned into a musical, first presented at the Hudson Backstage Theatre in Los Angeles in 1999. Like the film, it was set in the '30s, and it retained many of the film characters, including an educator lecturing viewers; the reefer-den hostess Mae; her boyfriend, the pusher Jack, who lures innocent teens to their ruination; and their unstable cohort Ralph. The musical's hero, young Jimmy Harper, stood in for both the film's Jimmy and Bill, and was burdened with the unfortunate plights of both one kills an old man in a hit-and-run accident, the other is framed for murder.
The musical added many outlandish touches of its own, from cannibalism to murder by garden hoe. And it was set in a high-school auditorium where the Lecturer is presenting "Tell Your Children" the film's original title, a cautionary play he has written and directed.
Emboldened by its status as a cult success in L.A., the musical Reefer Madness was given a first-class off-Broadway mounting, opening at the Variety Arts Theatre on October 7, 2001. Repeating from the L.A. cast were Christian Campbell Jimmy, Robert Torti Jack, John Kassir Ralph, and Erin Matthews Sally, the pathetic weed whore who sells her baby. Andy Fickman continued as director, but the New York production was choreographed by Paula Abdul.
The best items in the score came near the beginning, with an insistent title song, a catchy "Romeo and Juliet" duet for Jimmy and his girl Mary, and Mae's cri-de-coeur "The Stuff." In the roles of Mae and the Lecturer, Michele Pawk and Gregg Edelman were distinctly overqualified for their assignments.
After a year that had seen the arrival of Bat Boy, Urinetown, and The Producers, Reefer Madness was perhaps one tongue-in-cheek musical too many. Then too, is it really possible or necessary to spoof a property that now plays as an unintentionally funny parody of itself? The show was more heavy-handed than hilarious, a labored stage spoof that was not as much fun as the old film.
The show's L.A. success was not repeated, and the New York Reefer Madness lasted three weeks. There was no off-Broadway cast recording, although the L.A. run had been preserved on CD. After the New York flop, one might not have expected to see Reefer Madness go much further, but now it has. Earlier this year, cable-TV's Showtime televised a made-for-TV film version, and that movie is now a Showtime DVD.
Retained from the off-Broadway cast are Campbell, Kristen Bell now a television star on "Veronica Mars", Kassir, and Torti, although the latter only gets to play Jesus in the film, and not his main role of Jack. Jack is played by Steven Weber, with Ana Gasteyer as Mae, Amy Spanger as Sally, and Alan Cumming as the Lecturer and a host of other roles. Fickman is again the director, the screenplay is by original librettists Murphy and Studney, and even the original stage orchestrations have been retained.
The film cuts one stage song, "Dead Old Man," and adds a good new one, "Mary Jane/Mary Lane." Christian Campbell's sister, the actress Neve Campbell, gets to demonstrate her musical-theatre roots in a new, brief role as a waitress at the local five-and-dime, sharing a fantasy apache dance with Weber. "Tell Your Children" is now a film the Lecturer is introducing his scenes are in black-and-white, and the ultimate fates of Jimmy and Mae have been altered from the stage version.
Showtime's Reefer Madness is elaborately produced, filled with production numbers that include a Busby Berkeley/Bollywood-style orgy; a Las Vegas extravaganza for "Listen to Jesus, Jimmy"; an S&M fantasy for "Little Mary Sunshine"; and an animated sequence for Jimmy's "Brownie Song." The principal roles of Reefer Madness don't call for subtle playing, and all of the performances are fine, with Gasteyer the standout, just as Pawk was in the same role off-Broadway.
But Reefer Madness remains lively but mediocre. Blown up as it is here, it's somewhat more amusing than it was downtown. Yet it still plays like a would-be Little Shop of Horrors that doesn't quite measure up. In its perverse way, the'36 film is more fascinating than this campy spoof version.
When one thinks of the many stage musicals that never made it to the screen, it's fairly surprising that Reefer Madness got preserved. Still, film versions of New York stage musicals don't come along every day, and as a generally faithful document of one, this DVD is something that fans will probably want to collect.
The bonuses on the disc are significant. Included is the original '36 film in its sixty-five-minute entirety; the print is pretty bad, but one wonders if a better one exists. Then there's a fifteen-minute Showtime promotional featurette, "Grass Roots: Behind the Scenes," which offers background on the production, with reference to the actual government conspiracy against hemp and marijuana that led to the making of the original film.
And there's a full-length track of audio commentary featuring director Fickner, producer-writers Murphy and Studney, and cast members Campbell and Spanger. Like the film, this track is almost entirely jokey and tongue-in-cheek; it's sometimes difficult to figure out if the speaker is kidding or not, such as when they refer to Weber as "unprofessional" for giggling so much during shooting. As in the featurette, the show's off-Broadway failure is blamed on its opening only a month after September 11. How then to explain the smash New York success of Mamma Mia!, which arrived about a week after Reefer Madness?
Among the comments here, Cumming is described as both a genius and an "omnisexual," while Fickner says he's not openly gay, but has "musical-theatre tendencies." But the track does manage to include some less whimsical, more factual stuff, with historical background on the material, information on the tightly-budgeted shoot of the musical it used some sets from Showtime's "The L Word" series, and an occasional comparison of the musical film to the stage version.