The motion pic­ture you are about to wit­ness may star­tle you. It would not have been pos­si­ble, oth­er­wise, to suf­fi­cient­ly empha­size the fright­ful toll of the new drug men­ace which is destroy­ing the youth of Amer­i­ca in alarm­ing­ly increas­ing num­bers. Mar­i­hua­na is that drug — a vio­lent nar­cot­ic — an unspeak­able scourge — The Real Pub­lic Ene­my Num­ber One! Or at least that’s how the open­ing crawl of Reefer Mad­ness tells it.

Also known, in oth­er forms, as Tell Your Chil­dren, The Burn­ing Ques­tion, Dope Addict, Doped Youth and Love Mad­ness, the film has spent the past forty years accru­ing cult cred­i­bil­i­ty on the (high­ly over­lap­ping) mid­night-movie and cannabis-cul­ture cir­cuits. That pecu­liar spelling of what we know as mar­i­jua­na reveals only a whiff of its dis­tinc­tive blend of hand-wring­ing sala­cious­ness, aggres­sive square­ness, and sheer igno­rance. Kei­th Stroup, founder of the Nation­al Orga­ni­za­tion for the Reform of Mar­i­jua­na Laws, spot­ted the movie’s unin­tend­ed comedic poten­tial back in 1971, when he bought a print and began col­lege-cam­pus screen­ings. It today draws more pro­longed, dis­be­liev­ing guf­faws and chor­tles than ever before.

Since Reefer Mad­ness has fall­en into the pub­lic domain, you can hold your own mid­night screen­ing near­ly with­out effort by watch­ing it online. Behold the deeply askew motion pic­ture that began as a church-fund­ed moral­i­ty play, got into the hands of ear­ly exploita­tion-film icon Dwain Esper (he of 1934’s Mani­ac, 1937’s How to Undress in Front of Your Hus­band, and 1938’s Sex Mad­ness), and wound up as an uproar­i­ous main­stay of hazy uni­ver­si­ty audi­to­ria. While the film clear­ly knows noth­ing of mar­i­jua­na or its real effects — or, seem­ing­ly, of the real effects of any nar­cot­ic — that does­n’t stop its script from yield­ing a host of res­o­nant lines. These run from the “straight­for­ward ques­tion” of whether “you have, per­haps unwill­ing­ly, acquired a cer­tain habit through asso­ci­a­tion with cer­tain unde­sir­able peo­ple” to the rec­ol­lec­tion of hav­ing been “high enough to take over the marines and the navy” to that immor­tal imper­a­tive, “Bring me some reefers!” Laugh if you must, but bear in mind the final words from the solemn Dr. Car­roll: “The next tragedy may be that of your daugh­ter’s… or your son’s… or yours… or yours… or yours!”

You can always find Reefer Mad­ness in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

This is What Oliv­er Sacks Learned on LSD and Amphet­a­mines

Bela Lugosi Dis­cuss­es His Drug Habit as He Leaves the Hos­pi­tal in 1955

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Hal­loween has long since passed, grant­ed. But giv­en the over­abun­dance of Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions even now aris­ing all around us, a brac­ing splash of hor­ror won’t go amiss. This goes dou­ble when the splash comes from George A. Romero’s Night of the Liv­ing Dead, urtext of the mod­ern zom­bie movie. It goes triple when you can watch it free online. (It’s been uploaded in high-def­i­n­i­tion video, no less, an absolute essen­tial for lo-fi, low-bud­get gorefests.) Though only released in 1968, the movie appears on the inter­net legal­ly due to its dis­trib­u­tor not indi­cat­ing their copy­right on the film prints. They removed the orig­i­nal title cards, which dis­played the con­sid­er­ably less catchy orig­i­nal title Night of the Flesh Eaters, but for­got to put the copy­right state­ment back in with the new ones.

If Night of the Liv­ing Dead strikes you as some­what déclassé for a site like Open Cul­ture, ask your­self whether you’ve actu­al­ly seen the movie. If you haven’t, then it seems you suf­fer from a vast gap — a vast, zom­bie filled gap — in your aware­ness of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry cin­e­ma cul­ture. The film has even won insti­tu­tion­al val­i­da­tion. Just read the titles of these real arti­cles: “Rewrit­ing the Dead: The Ten­sion between Nos­tal­gia and Per­ver­sion in George A. Romero’s Night of the Liv­ing Dead,” “Inner-City Exhi­bi­tion and the Genre Film: Dis­trib­ut­ing Night of the Liv­ing Dead,” “Greek Gifts: Vision and Revi­sion in Two Ver­sions of Night of the Liv­ing Dead,” “A Mod­ern Med­i­ta­tion on Death: Iden­ti­fy­ing Bud­dhist Teach­ings in George A. Romero’s Night of the Liv­ing Dead.” If you’re look­ing for a PhD. the­sis top­ic, you may have turned up too late to this par­tic­u­lar movie. But it’ll cer­tain­ly take your mind off gift shop­ping.

You can always find Night of the Liv­ing Dead in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Look in the Noir, Thriller, Hor­ror and Hitch­cock sec­tion.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Quin­tes­sen­tial Vam­pire Film Nos­fer­atu Free Online as Hal­loween Approach­es

Where Hor­ror Film Began: The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

The First Unin­tend­ed Hor­ror Film (1895)?

Tro­ma Enter­tain­ment, the Mak­er of Acclaimed B‑Movies, Puts 150 Free Films on YouTube

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.