Stu claims, mind you, that he found this somehow in the library while looking up Neve Campbell.

Reefer Madness: the Movie Musical was a stage production and then was made into a film for the cable channel SHOWTIME. It's an astonishing piece of work, all the more astonishing because the music is at times as good as ANYthing I've heard on stage and it's by two pretty unknown guys.

The amazing talent includes yes, Neve Campbell (who runs the malt shop) and her brother, Alan Cumming (who plays at least 10 parts and his accent never slips - it's impossible to remember the guy's a Scot) and Steven Weber, BORN to wear pin-striped suits and have a pencil-thin mustache. The female lead is Kristen Bell who stars in the tv show "Veronica Mars". SNL alumna Ana Gasteyer is not only good in thisk, but has a FANtastic singing voice - who knew? Others were pretty much unknown to me.

I saw the 1936 film "Reefer Madness" in college; it was howlingly funny. Edie and I walked back to the dorm in helpless laughter, and i suggested to her that people probably thought we WERE stoned, we were giggling so. The only fortunate thing was that we weren't alone. The take-off here is really rather smartly done, with some telling comments about scaring people, threatening their "Americanism" (Kochinski, that's a Russian name, isn't it?), equating intelligence with wealth (william Randolph Hearst is a VERY rich man so he must be right).

The song/production number "Listen to Jesus, Jimmy" caused my jaw to drop more than once. HORRIBLE rhymes (I'm the face on the shroud of Turin, do i need to test your urine?), hysterical routine, cute Jesus (wow, who knew he was that built?) and "Lonely Pew"(Poor Sally as she sings "The wafers now don't taste so great/They won't transubstantiate") were well, seriously, incredibly well done. And the animated brownie song? Well, you really should see this very strange little film.