Good Girl Gone Bad

Another good girl gone bad story, is the one told in the 1936 exploitation film Marihuana, directed by legendary exploitation director Dwain Esper. Esper is widely considered the father of the exploitation film, doing several early 30s films such Narcotic, Maniac, Modern Motherhood, and Sex Madness, just to name a few titles. Marihuana was written by Hildegarde Stadie, Esper's wife and the writers for many of his films. For those of you who want to watch the film, the first of several parts is posted here on YouTube and you can watch the rest in sequence.

The plot is simple, as most exploitation films usually are. Burma "Blondie" Roberts (Harley Wood) is a good girl who goes to a party and smokes some pot. With Burma at his party is her dumb boyfriend Dick Collier (Hugh McArthur) and is being thrown by peddlers Tony Santello (Paul Ellis) and Nicki Romero (Pat Carlyle). Don't you just love the Italian stereotyping? One of her friends drowns when the marijuana leads them to a frenzy of skinny-dipping, and the drug dealers help cover up the body. When Burma's boyfriend gets her pregnant, they work for the dope pushers to get married. Her boyfriend is murdered and Burma becomes a dealer, giving her baby up for adoption. Everything spirals out of control in a drug induced spiral from there.

Every review about this movie bills is as a bad-quality Reefer Madness, with its use of unfactual "facts" and scare tactics to make drugs appear as evil as possible. The sort of fake documentary style of the movie doesn't really make it that more convincing. The misinformation of the film is abetted by some not so stellar acting. A good review of the film can be read here, thanks to 1000misspenthours.com. This is one of those films that never would have been big if it weren't for the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act and the hubbub surrounding it. For those of you that want, you can get a second opinion here at the Cine Classics blog.