"Mary Jane" (1968) d/ Maury Dexter

Some of you older heads might remember Philly native and bubblegum pop star of the late fifties, Fabiano "Fabian" Forte from his movie work in the early sixties after those mop-topped British Beatle bastards invaded the American music scene, appearing alongside the likes of John Wayne and Bob Hope. Tonight's review, a lost drive-in drugsploitation number, came later, when neither his music nor his movies were in the spotlight anymore. It's too bad, too, because this one is a real pisser that toes the straight laced lines of earlier, equally uninformed anti-pot scare films like Reefer Madness, Marihuana (both 1936) and Assassin of Youth (1937), while making Fabian's character more sympathetic to the edgier pot smoking scene of the day.


"You toke pipe-blasting punks are ruining my Happy Days!", says Gas Station Attendant (Garry Marshall).
Jerry (Michael Margotta) wants to be in with the "In Crowd" at his school in the worst possible way. It just so happens that that particular clique, the "Mary Jane" club, a group of preppies and jocks who secretly blow pot all the time, and wear custom dog tag necklaces with their full name on one side and "Mary Jane" on the other (how conspicuous-like), is run by silver spoon-yapped, jock-asshole-extraordinaire, Jordan Bates (Kevin Coughlin), who doesn't find Jerry very groovy at all, man. To further complicate matters, three kids have just died from this mary-huana stuff via hokey pre-credits stoned balls car crash, and the staff is in cooperation with the local badges to put an end to this rapidly spreading menace, that influences high school kids (who all look mid-twenties, at the least) to commit heinous acts like spraying gas station attendants with hoses, necking on a blanket in the grass, and even pretending to ride amusement park rides while the park is closed... fucking dope fiend kids.


A pinner like this today, cocaine and heroin tomorrow.
Luckily for them, they've got a groovy young art teacher/ football coach named Mr. Blake (Fabian) who's hep enough to have tried grass in college, and always leaves his keys in his convertible, in case, you know, Jerry needs to jack his car and lead cops on a high speed chase with a discarded sack of dope in the back seat, where Phil had hoped to land fellow educator Ms. Holden (Diane McBain), if she wasn't so frigid towards his grass blanket antics. Blake gets framed for the buddha and lands in jail, where he raps with Hymie from Get Smart (Dick Gautier, who co-wrote the movie) and a junkie in withdrawal uses his sweater to hang himself(!). Meanwhile, for his unresponsive peers, Jerry's physically ill from smoking grass, drowning himself in a lake, shoplifting watches, and ultimately, blasting hashish and delivering a package of low grade shwag-weed to some punchy jocks from across town that are expecting Acapulco Gold.Jerry's sympathetic teacher buddy, Blake, bailed out by Holden, intercepts Jordan's drug deal with the local ice cream man (pre-dating Cheech and Chong by some thirteen years by my count!), and takes the stuff to the author-no, he doesn't. Free on bail, he takes the stuff home with him. What follows is a predictable climax, but with an unexpected twist, that I'll leave you to discover for yourselves.


It's a little too late to turn this one loose.
Fabian appeared two years earlier with Vincent Price in Mario Bava's campy mess, Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966), while the clubfooted  Coughlin suffered an untimely death at thirty at the hands of a hit-and-run driver, eight years later. Patty "Bad Seed" McCormack appears here as Jordan's sweet blonde arm candy. Besides Gautier and Gary Marshall, who'd also appear in Dick Clark's choice drug opus, Psych-out!, the same year, there are also blink-and-you'll-miss-'em cameos from Terri Garr and Hollywood Squares host Peter Marshall, who also co-wrote the script. Despite the mook-nificently misinformed marijuana un-science abound throughout, there remains a decent movie underneath it all, and on the scale, it inhales and buries a pair of Wops; worth a look if you can hunt down a copy, though I imagine the folks that would appreciate this one the most probably lack the motivation to get off of their asses and find it.


"Bitchslapped by Fabian" is not something you wanna put on your resume', kid.

"Up in Smoke"(1978) d/ Lou Adler

Examining the debut effort from counterculture comedians, Cheech and Chong(Happy belated 75th birthday, maaaaan), 1978's Up in Smoke, brings back a whole mess o' memories for me, not all of which involve hallucinogenic high-jinks, surprisingly enough. I first encountered the movie as a nine or ten year old kid who'd yet to even smoke a cigarette to that point, but I still managed to secure myself  kicks a plenty with it, regardless of what a little fucking square I was at the time. You don't have to be a hardcore doper to get most of the gags, but a few crispy bong hits later, you'll relate to the goofy absurdity of it all like never before, maaaaan, as your mother tries to talk to you, telling you how to live, with your newly sieve-like head. Along for the ride are genre regs like Tom Skerritt, Strother Martin, Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith, Louisa Moritz, and perhaps most memorably, Stacy Keach as a starchy drape of a narc who couldn't catch mononucleosis playing 'Spin the Bottle' with Madonna.
 
Puffing a hog's leg fulla Labrador like this while driving leads to excessive low riding.
Man (Chong) cuts out on his nagging folks (Strother Martin, Edie Adams) for greener pastures in his convertible VW Bug, and is forced to impersonate a hitch hiking chick with big chachabingos to secure himself a ride with Pedro(Cheech), the low rider nearsighted/baked/stupid enough to pick him up.After smoking a fatty bomber packed with Maui Wowie and dog shit, the duo get arrested for parking the 'Love Machine' on a traffic median, but beat the charges when Man accidentally chugs the judge's vodka(!) in court. While trying to score some smoke from Pedro's 'Nam vet cousin, Strawberry(Tom Skerritt), the place is raided by the local narc unit, led by Sgt. Stedenko(Stacy Keach), and the pair find themselves deported to Tijuana with most of Pedro's family, who called La Migra on themselves to get a free bus ride home for an upcoming wedding. Meanwhile, a chick blows shneezers of Ajax and Strawberry wigs out on one of his crazy 'Nam trips and shoots his own Mynah bird. Sounds like one of our old parties...

"I wasn't lookin' at his neck, man."
In Tijuana, the fellas pick up the wrong van for delivery back to Los Angeles, and it just so happens to be one fabricated entirely from 'fiberweed' whose leaky exhaust provides for some spirited munchies from a highway patrolman later on, after the boys pick up two hitchhiking doper chicks on their way to the Battle of the punk Bands at the Roxy later that evening. Stedenko and his associates arrest and search a carload of nuns, shoot out their own tires, and manage to set the weed van on fire after finally arresting the responsible dealers outside the venue. The hallucinogenic vapors travel into the gig through the vents, where the boys' band, Alice Bowie, is too wasted to even set up their instruments after Man gets slipped a 'lude before their set. Naturally, the once angry crowd gets the instant munchies and begins to groove on the makeshift band's immortal classic, 'Earache My Eye'. The victorious duo sets off on the highway to ponder the future and burn a frags chunk o' hash, when it drops in Pedro's lap and sets the seat on fire, as they swerve off the road, a smokestack billowing from the windows. Alright, let's all go get high.

Bathsalts?? In our day you had to blow shneezers of Ajax to trumpet like an elephant at parties. 
Ellen Burstyn(!) made an uncredited appearance here, while Harry Dean Stanton's contribution ended up on the cutting room floor. C & C would follow this one up with Next Movie(1980), Nice Dreams(1981), and Things Are Tough All Over(1982),  Still Smokin' and Yellowbeard (both 1983), not to mention 1984's massive flop, Corsican Brothers, after which the seventies icons would pursue separate interests until the late oughts saw them reconcile and reunite for a comedy tour, and innumerable cameo appearances in commercials and television thereafter. It's gotta be in Amanda Bynes' Top Ten, I'm thinking. I dunno, I'd blow some kgb with her, wouldn't you? Tonight's review is a cult comedy of the highest/lowest order, one that seemed more dated before the current advent of cannabis-related culture and late seventies style, and for that, I bestow upon it three wops; a raucous laugh-filled party blast that only drug-free wet blankets won't enjoy, and especially apt since ol' Dub's previous three attempts to tackle this one this week all went up in a massive head-cloud of the titular stuff, of which I foresee another about to be expelled any minute now. Bubblebubblebubblecoughcoughrighteous.

"I'm so bloody rich! And I only know three chords! Watch me burnnnnn!!!"