Cannabis in cinema: our favourite stoner movies

To celebrate the DVD release of 'Storm Warning' a new film featuring a family of psychotic marijuana growers, Derek Adams investigates the allure of cannabis as the screen drug of choice for moviemakers

Marijuana, dope, weed, ganja, griff, pot, reefer, hemp, herb – call it what you will, but cannabis has long proved an irresistible draw for filmmakers.

This week sees the release of ‘Storm Warning’, a disturbing and nasty DVD about a trio of psychotic marijuana growers who reside in the swamplands of some unknown Aussie territory.

Into this hellhole of rain-lashed wooden shacks stumbles a couple of lost city souls – and so begins a tortuous 90 minutes or so of psychopathic torture as unhinged ‘Pop’ and his two inbred sons embark on an orgy of rape and terror.

Things might have turned out differently, if only these green-fingered yokels had smoked some of their harvest first. The film would be called
‘What Storm Warning?’ and the inbreds would have welcomed their guests with open arms and baked a chocolate cake before collapsing in a fit of giggles.

Truth is, cannabis is the only drug to have spawned a thriving sub-genre – the comedic ‘stoner movie’. Yes, many movies have featured other substances, both legal and illegal, but let’s face it, other medicinals just don’t cut it as comedy. The cocaine comedy would be anything but funny and have everyone talking at the speed of light about themselves; the crack pic would have its wide-eyed protagonists going on a crazed killing spree shortly before jumping off a tall building; the ecstasy ‘E-pic’ would run something like a version of ‘Flashdance’ in which everyone drinks huge quantities of water, falls in love with each other, gurns their faces off and looks like they’ve been up for weeks; the smack flick would be scriptless – characters would just sit around for hours in a catatonic stupor saying very little; while the alcohol movie, if set in Britain, would start off in a pub with everyone feeling happy but, as the evening progressed, conversations would become maudlin and before long, a fight would erupt and spill out on to the streets with lots of broken bottles and screaming girlfriends.

The stoner movie, on the other hand, is all very benign and, especially to those familiar with the effects of the drug, often hilarious. One of the most winning films on the subject is Nigel Cole’s astute Cornish village-set comedy ‘Saving Grace’ (a film ripe for a DVD re-release), which accurately portrays mild dope usage among the respectable middle-aged fraternity. Brenda Blethyn delivers an engaging performance as a recently widowed gardener who, having been saddled with £300,000 of her late husband’s debt, is persuaded to turn her horticultural skills to the nurturing of a lucrative, mind-blowing strain of hydroponically grown waccy baccy.

‘Saving Grace’ is a fabulous movie, but it’s not a stoner film in the truest sense: for that you need not only reefer running through the plot, but a pair of long-haired teenage lads, lots of dude-speak and, ideally, a few scantily clad college girls. The not-terribly-good 1970s comedies of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong are prime examples of the genre. I’m embarrassed to say that ‘Up in Smoke’ (1978) was one of the first films my wife and I ever saw together. What were we thinking?

Nevertheless, credit where credit’s due: before C&C came along, cannabis was either confined to occasional scenes in films like ‘Easy Rider’ (1969) or given the full anti-drug treatment as in the US government’s unintentionally hilarious 1936 morality doc, ‘Reefer Madness’ (check out some snippets on YouTube). More recently, C&C’s baton has been carried by those very funny Asian dope fiends, Harold and Kumar.

But there’s one aspect of the stoner pic that continues to intrigue me: how do filmmakers get away with shooting a roomfull of illegal weed? ‘Saving Grace’ is swamped in it, so its director Nigel Cole should know: ‘We were determined that real stoners would see that greenhouse towards the end of the film and just go “Holy shit”. It had to look like it was full of the best buds you’d ever seen. There were two things: one, we had a brilliant modelmaker. I went to see him the first day and he had one leaf and one stalk in front of him. Gradually, it became harder and harder to see him behind all the plants he was making out of wire, cloth, paper and paint.

‘Then we got to thinking that it would be good to have some real stuff in there. The producer got a licence from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to have grown, and to buy, large amounts of real hemp – non-useful stuff, but still illegal. The local police were very wise by then and insisted that they held it overnight and, blow me down, when the props person went to the police station to pick it up, half of it was missing.’

Now you know why that amazing-looking Cornish weed that you scored from a tall bloke with short hair back in the year 2000 never had any effect.

‘Storm Warning’ is out now on DVD.

High rollers
‘Dazed and Confused’ (1993)
Rose-tinted nostalgia and bitchin’ tunes in Richard Linklater’s kaleidoscopic weed-steeped riff on ‘American Graffiti’.

‘The Big Lebowski’ (1998)
Jeff Bridges stones his way through the Coens’ hilarious crime caper to a soundtrack of Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Eagles.

‘Up in Smoke’ (1978)
Cheech & Chong driving several tons of weed – disguised as a van – across the Mexican border.

‘Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny’ (2006)
Satirical rock duo Tenacious D (Jack Black and Kyle Glass) star in a hallucinogenic reference-fuelled buddy movie. A shared love of dope and the desire to be the greatest rock band bond them in a quest for a guitar pick endowed with powers by the devil.

‘Harold & Kumar Get the Munchies’ (2004)
Two dope freaks smoke a strong one, spy an ad for a burger joint, get the munchies and go on a riotous wild goose chase.

Know a better weed flick? Tell us below.