Aphrodisiac ! The Sexual Secret of Marijuana

Documentary / Dramatisation

Impulse Pictures / Synapse

R1 DVD

Americans seem to have a strange hang-up about sex. It is a perfectly normal function but it is either hidden or, in the case of pornography, actively suppressed. I can remember early U.S. TV shows in Australia (like the Dick Van Dyke Show) where a married couple had chaste single beds. There was never any suggestion that they would occasionally jump into bed together, even though they somehow had a son. Since virgin births have gone out of fashion I can only assume that they hired a Mexican illegal immigrant to do the deed.

While most European countries just got on with it, indeed revelled in it, the Americans would rather have a panel show to discuss it. The documentaries shown to schoolkids about sexual diseases, teenage pregnancies and the evils of drug taking should have scared the kids into behaving. With hang-ups like this ingrained into the young people it is no wonder they went to war so often – perhaps just to spice up their otherwise boring little lives. Yet these were the days of massive acceptable drugtaking. There was “mother’s little helper” – valium – and a massive cigarette and alcohol market. Americans remained a little ambivalent about drugs like marijuana but as more young people tried it they started to try to control it. After all, if young people enjoyed it then it must be sinful.

On the other hand there were some proven uses for marijuana in the medical field. This film explores another area where marijuana could supposedly help – sexual performance. The way they present it is hilarious. The film is really a few mild porno clips (“dramatisations”) joined together by a surprisingly interesting history of marijuana use, abuse and control. Some of the claims made are simply ridiculous. Marijuana may be helpful to cure diseases like homosexuality, lesbianism and frigidity. Marijuana use can make a girl more willing to have sex before marriage and therefore, it is implied, cure virginity. It can turn a modest sex-shy young girl into a raging nympho. It can improve your sex life by giving you more, longer climaxes.

In an attempt to provide some sort of balance we have stern-looking men warning us against the evils of marijuana use, but we also get statistics showing that alcohol is responsible for more diseases and deaths than marijuana.

We also see how to prepare marijuana for use in pot brownies, marijuana-filled biscuits. Just in case you are new to the field there are also demonstrations of how to prepare a joint, and even a joint-rolling machine.

The film has to be intended as a tongue-in-cheek spoof, because I can’t imagine how some of it could be taken seriously. The general impression is that stoners were a mentally deficient lot. The tame porn clips seem to be decorative rather than part of the plot. They were removed when the film was first issued on home videotape even though they were pretty inoffensive. For this rerelease Impulse has found a copy of the full original film. It shows its age but is still a fascinating view of changing attitudes to marijuana over the years.

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