“Reefer gets you raped. And you won’t care!”

Such is one of the hilariously overwrought statements blasted across the screen, 30s public service announcement-style, during Studio Theatre’s hysterical production of Reefer Madness: The Musical.

Based loosely upon the 1938 anti-marijuana propaganda film of the same name, the show’s setup involves a high school theater troupe dramatizing the devastating effects of reefer, using the tale of one high school sweetheart couple’s demise as its center. As soon as those wholesome drama geeks come on stage like a rabid mob of villagers, singing, “Creeping like a communist, it’s knocking at our doors/Turning all our children into hooligans and whores!”, you know it’s going to be a trip.

The songs of Reefer Madness are inarguably catchy and surprisingly effective lyrically, but Studio adds a couple neat touches of its own as well, such as the 420 winking address for the pot den, and having an old fashioned, costumed soda hawker sell snacks during intermission (yes, those brownies really are going for 25 cents). Matthew Gardiner’s jittery choreography keeps the pace pulsing throughout.