In 1938, a film called Reefer Madness shocked the nation with its lurid tale of innocent youth seduced, degraded, and destroyed by marijuana. In 1979, an advocate for reform of marijuana laws found the film in the Library of Congress archives and brought it back into circulation. This time audiences howled—not in outrage but in laughter. In 1999, a couple of guys in Los Angeles saw an opportunity to turn the movie into a stage musical. It’s now occupying—what else?—the highest performing space at Studio Theatre to the audience’s whooping delight.

It is a hoot. Think The Rocky Horror Show meets “Just Say No.” As the playwrights describe the plot, “One puff of the Demon Weed instantly transforms the smoker into a horny, violent, cackling weed freak, twitching insanely with the spastic abandon of Crispin Glover on a pancake griddle.” At times it sounds like a Bush-administration-approved sex-education class. Condom Madness, anyone?

There’s no place for subtlety in Reefer Madness. Larry Redmond leads an outstanding cast that takes full advantage of every scenery-chewing moment. Director Keith Alan Baker cleverly starts the production with authentic newsreels from the ’30s and lets his actors loose to sing and dance their way to Hades and back.

The production comes with a warning that it contains mature themes, strong language, adult humor, and religious parody, as well as simulated drug use, suggested violence, and sexual explicitness. If that doesn’t fill seats, I don’t know what will.

It may be offensive to some people. In one scene, Jesus Christ appears to save the hapless high-schooler who has become an addict. He starts handing out Communion wafers, intoning, “Body of me,” to each taker. When one girl refuses, he says, “Jewish? Me too!”

Reefer Madness: The Musical requires no heavy intellectual lifting, but it’s a hilarious way to spend a summer evening.