Podcasts
[Horror Queers Podcast] Queering Up Cannabis in ‘Reefer Madness’
A Gay and Rapey Mr. Tumnus.
After pranking everyone and their mom in April Fool’s Day and doing blow with Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, Joe and I getting into a whole new set of shenanigans this 4/20 by taking a hit with the crew of the reefer den in Andy Fickman‘s Reefer Madness!
In the movie musical, a mysterious Lecturer (Alan Cumming, X2: X-Men United) visits a small middle-America town to warn them about the dangers of marijuana by showing them an anti-marijuana propaganda film called Tell Your Children. In that film, young Jimmy (Christian Campbell, Trick) and his sweet girlfriend Mary Lane (Kristen Bell, Veronica Mars, Frozen) are seduced into smoking the deadly plant by the inhabitants of the reefer den: street tough Jack (Steven Weber, The Perfection), battered housewife Mae (Ana Gasteyer, Mean Girls), college dropout Ralph (John Kassir, Tales From the Crypt) and neglectful mother/neighborhood slut Sally (Amy Spanger). Depending on the person, marijuana is shown to have disastrous effects on its user, including turning them into rapey dominatrixes, and sometimes even cannibalistic psychopaths
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Episode 69 – Reefer Madness (2005)
Happy 4/20, y’all! We’re celebrating with a pack of giggle sticks, a chocolate brownie-scented DVD box and a movie musical! That’s right, we’re discussing the TV film adaptation of the stage musical adaptation of the 1936 propaganda film: Reefer Madness! Just hope we don’t turn into cannibalistic murderers like some of the people in this movie.
Before we take a hit, we go into our own personal histories with marijuana and discuss the circumstances that led to the original (and absolutely terrible) 1936 film. From there, it’s a one-way trip to toke town which inspires an impromptu Alexis Schitt impersonation from Joe and an in-depth discussion of….the movie Burlesque?
We quickly course-correct and praise the great Alan Cumming (who portrays no less than three characters in the film), Ana Gasteyer (Trace’s choice for film MVP), Amy Spanger (Joe’s choice for film MVP), a dominatrix Kristen Bell, a cameo-ing Neve Campbell, a creepy Steven Weber and Christian (brother of Neve) Campbell, aka the Human Dimple.
Warning for the faint of heart: this film is patently offensive to everyone, so no PC police here! We’ve got jokes about race, rape, queerness, women, men and, of course, drugs (would that it had been mere heroin!). Oh, and don’t forget about blasphemy: we’ve also got Alan Cumming as goat Satan, Jesus singing about weed and stripper angels. And watch out for those singing carnivorous clams!
And if you really want to have some fun, take a drink (or a hit) every time Trace says he loves something about the movie.
Cross out Reefer Madness!
Coming up on Wednesday: We’re going back to the ’80s to visit the Freelings and Reverend Kane in Poltergeist II: The Other Side.
– Joe & Trace
P.S. Check out this month’s article on 1981’s Looker. You can find all of the old articles here.
P.P.S. As an added bonus, if you subscribe to our Patreon you can listen to episodes on Mike Flanagan’s Hush and Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers, which are part of the “Trapped In Your House” horror theme we went while everyone is practicing social distancing.
After kicking off July with discussions of Joe Dante’s seminal werewolf film The Howling (listen) and Ken Russell’s controversial erotic thriller Crimes of Passion (listen), we’re heading to Maine to dissect one of Stephen King‘s most misguided adaptations in Lawrence Kasdan‘s 2003 misfire Dreamcatcher!
Dreamcatcher sees friends Henry (Thomas Jane), Jonesy (Damian Lewis), Pete (Timothy Olyphant) and Beaver (Jason Lee) reunite for their annual hunting trip in Maine. Their reunion is cut short when they find themselves caught in the middle of a war between a hostile race of farty-farty aliens and an elite US military unit led by Colonel Abraham Curtis (Morgan Freeman), who has been driven mad after spending decades tracking the extraterrestrials. When Jonesy is possessed by one of the aliens, the remaining friends seek out their disabled childhood friend Duddits (Donnie Wahlberg), who they believe has powers that can save Jonesy…and the world.
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, and RSS.
Episode 396: Dreamcatcher (2003)
Watch out for “ister gay” (oof), take some Gas-X and bite our bags because we’re talking Lawrence Kasdan’s baffling 2003 adaptation of Stephen King’s equally baffling novel Dreamcatcher.
Join us as we go all in on the farty-farty aliens populating this hilarious misfire that often feels like a bad Kevin Smith script. It’s a film filled with characters who get a single defining trait (if they’re lucky), played by respectable actors who are here for the paycheck (looking at you, Morgan Freeman).
Plus: blown-out assholes, using guns as telephones, pitying poor Donnie Wahlberg, and wondering why the hell this movie is called Dreamcatcher.
Cross out Dreamcatcher!
Coming Up Next: We’re going to be lounging around a posh Greenwich Village apartment as we check in on Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 513 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Forbidden Fruits, Saccharine, Evil Dead Burn, an audio commentary on Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (aka Howling II: Stirba – Werewolf Bitch), and the conclusion of our coverage of AMC’s The Vampire Lestat on the Requel Tier.