I have never found Reefer Madness as funny as a great many seem to think it is. Maybe it’s because I have never smoked pot, and I never intend to. I say this even after the state I reside in recently legalized it for recreational use. I don’t have any specific reasons for my apathy towards it. When I stop to really think about it, I think it is because I have yet to see anybody do or say anything especially clever or intelligent while under its influence. I figure I’m daft enough as it is.
But 1957’s The Tijuana Story is a marijuana-scare picture that is often unintentionally hilarious. That is more than a bit unfortunate, as it is intended to be a tribute to, and biopic of, real-life newspaper reporter Manuel Acosta Mesa (played by Rodolfo Acosta), who was murdered after running an expose on the members of the local crime syndicate.
Even at the very beginning, we can tell this is going to be a garbage picture. We are first subjected to a montage of stock footage, over which a narrator tells us about how the city has many “sins provided at bargain prices”. Well, no wonder Americans keep jumping the border–it’s to get their vices at outlet mall prices. Illegal goods are cheaper down there, and the dealers pass the savings along to the consumer.
What is really weird is the credit sequence is followed by a different guy doing a fourth-wall break. Paul Coates looks directly into the camera as he tells the audience who Mesa was, and gives a bit of background concerning why this man was important. Weirdly, Coates then assumes the duty of narrator from this point on, when I don’t think he served that purpose earlier. Multiple narrators? Why, movie, you spoil us!
The head of the local syndicate is Paul Newlan. I’m surprised his guy could run a crime empire, when he’s so petty. He is so upset by what Mesa has been writing about him that he threatens slander charges. Newlan should also brush up on his law, as written statements that defame a person are “libel”.
He’s not the only one could use more education. I swear one or more character pronounces the name “Manuel” as “manual”. One character asks where “manual” is, and I wanted to say he probably went to go find “automatic”.
Speaking of pronunciations, I have always been curious why everybody I have ever heard say the city’s name has said is “tee-ah-wan-ah”. This film is the first time I have heard it pronounced “tee-wan-ah”, which feels more correct, given my middle-school Spanish I took a few decades ago.
Less realistic is every other person and other thing that happens in this film. Take, for example, Robert Blake as one of Mesa’s kids. I guess Mesa got around and had a kid with an Italian woman. Or maybe those casting the film thought? Blake could pass for Hispanic. Care to hazard a guess which is more likely?
Equally fake is a trio of American hepcats that are as unbelievable as in any other major studio fare at the time. Chief among these is James Darren, as a rebel without a great many things, let alone a cause. In what has to be one of the funniest scenes I have watched outside of a comedy, the police find him on the beach and inspect his car, believing he crashed into three cars nights before while under the influence of the demon weed. They are even going to send his car’s ashtray to the crime lab to confirm there are marijuana ashes in it, and I can just imagine the stunned disbelief on the lab scientist’s faces when tasked with doing this. Anyway, Darren jumps into the ocean and starts swimming off towards the horizon, making me wonder where he thought he was swimming to. But the best part is one of the cops starts firing shots at him. To reiterate: a cop tries to shoot a suspect who fled into the ocean, who is up on charges of smoking pot and crashing into three unoccupied cars. I wonder if this officer was eventually transferred to the Los Angeles police force.
Another of those young Yankee hoodlums says his grandmother used to send him to sleep by putting his head in the over and turning on the gas. I know that’s supposed to be a joke, but I don’t get it. If it is true, I only wish his grandmother had done this to him more often and/or for longer each time. Also, was his grandmother Sylvia Plath?
But these are minor characters. I’m writing mostly about them because what happens with the leads isn’t as interesting. Curiously, the film is focused less on Mesa and more on Robert McQueeney, as an American who runs the club through which Newlan conducts his illegal operations. What is weird is McQueeney seems to genuinely believe Newlan is clean. But this doesn’t stop Newlan and a thug from eventually beating the American to a pulp. In what has to be the most pleasantly surprising moment in this picture, McQueeney’s wife (Jean Wiles) holds the villains at gunpoint and successfully makes them back off. Also, I forgot to mention McQueeney looks unnervingly similar to Elon Musk, so I couldn’t shake the suspicion he was really evil all along.
The Tijuana Story is a bad movie, though it has some hilarious moments. Too bad it isn’t a comedy.
Oh, and it also taught me how to find clams in beach sand—a skill I hope to never need to use.
Dir: Lou Morheim
Starring Rodolfo Acosta, James Darren, Robert McQueeney
Watched as part of Mill Creek’s blu-ray box set Film Noir Archives Volume 3: 1957-1960