- FIFTY PILLS - WIDESCREEN (DVD MOVIE)
Based on the propaganda film from 1936 that has become a cult hit, Reefer Madness is the height of camp entertainment! Framed as a "documentary", a straight-laced high school principal (Alan Cumming) seeks to impart his wisdom about the demon weed by telling a frightful tale about the fate of two innocent teens who fall under the spell of the drugs. Filled with outrageously funny and musical performances by Neve Campbell, Christian Campbell, Kristen Bell and Steven Weber, Reefer Madness is the feel good event of the year!If the idea of making a musical out of Roger Corman's Z-movie quickie
The Little Shop of Horrors sounded weird, stick around for the all-singing, all-dancing
Reefer Madness. Deliriously based on the notorious 1936 anti-pot social-guidance film, this is an ultra-campy enterprise that lands somewhere between
Rocky Horror! and a John Waters comedy. Christian Campbell and the spritzy Kristen Bell play the innocent teens lured into a soul-sapping cloud of marijuana dependence by pencil-mustached pusher Steven Weber and his long-suffering dame, Ana Gasteyer. The cast includes femme fatale Amy Spanger and a cameo by Neve Campbell, who dances her way through one sequence. The musical was written and composed by Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney, who re-create some of the kookiest scenes from the original movie ("Faster! Faster!"). Their funniest idea is to frame the sordid saga with a black-and-white story of a government agent showing a public-service film to horrified small-town citizens; he's played by the reliably sinister Alan Cumming, who also pops up in a variety of guises in the film-within-the-film. The only problem with this made-for-Showtime version of the stage show is that camp tends to wear thin, especially at 109 minutes, despite the expert song parodies. Even the original hour-long
! Reefer Madness got old quick.
--Robert HortonOffici! al Selec tion - Tribeca Film Festival 2006; Bonus Features: Filmmakers' Commentary; Deleted & Extended Scenes; Behind the Scenes Featurette
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