Even though I am not a pot smoker and more than likely never will be, I have to admit I find marijuana comedies pretty dang funny.

Growing up on the starter drug of Cheech and Chong movies when I was a toddler, I have found the predicaments and solutions by cinematic stoners and their kind bud to usually be one of the seven rings of true comedy, with 1997’s Half Baked fitting in there nicely, a truly stupid film packed with truly stupid laughs.

Thurgood Jenkins (Dave Chappelle) is the quintessential weed enthusiast with a janitorial job and a circle of bros who practically stay stoned. When one of his crew gets arrested for accidentally killing a police horse, they decide to become drug dealers themselves, thanks to a special strain of sativa they get from Thurgood’s job at a laboratory.

Becoming the hottest dope dealers in the New York City area, they soon gain the unwanted attention of notorious criminal Samson Simpson (Clarence Williams III), leading to an absolutely minor gang war — the kind that’s probably expected in a movie like this, i.e., the pot-influenced equivalent of a Three Stooges pie fight.

Produced by Robert Simonds (the money man behind SNL-related classics like Billy Madison, Joe Dirt, and, uh, Corky Romano), Half Baked is definitely a product of the illegal times. With legalization only blocks from my house now, it seems almost quaint; still, the scenarios, some 20 or so years later, bring the laughs.

Although, I imagine if I did smoke weed, I’d probably be one of the pot archetypes in the movie, finding all of this stupid — and not in a good way. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Allan Arkush is most known as the director of the late-’70s cult hit Rock ’n’ Roll High School, one of my favorite films of all time. But, in 1983, he made an even cultier flick, one that barely got released, despite a great cast and an even greater soundtrack: Get Crazy, also one of my favorite films of all time, if not more so.

Some have called this a sequel, but while it’s not a literal continuation, it’s definitely a spiritual one, featuring a group of regular shmoes who chaotically run the historic Saturn Theater as they go up against the ruling class of moneymen who wish to not only destroy the Saturn, but own the world with their dollar bills. Think Ms. Togar on a sleazier scale.

While the story of stage manager Neil (Daniel Stern) and his crazy crew taking on the slimy Colin Beverly (Ed Begley Jr.) might seem like a routine one, the comedy is very much in the same vein of Rock ’n’ Roll High School, filled with plenty of sight gags; here, even the drama is played for silly laughs, an artform that seems to be lost.

The music undeniably makes the movie so good, featuring (mostly) famous singers in faux roles, such as King Blues (Bill Henderson), Nada (featuring Fear’s Lee Ving) and the surprisingly hilarious Lou Reed as the reclusive Auden, who scores big with a transcendently gorgeous tune that plays as the credits roll. Best of all is the incomparable Malcolm McDowell as the Jagger-like prick Reggie Wanker, a veteran rocker so wrapped up in his self-importance that, when he’s accidentally dosed by the shadowy drug dealer roaming the theater, his most prized possession becomes his turgid conscience, showing him the error of ways — complete with a British accent.

While Arkush is still a director (mostly for television), it truly is a shame he never became as big as contemporaries like Spielberg and so on. As you watch Get Crazy, though, you realize it’s probably because his eye for truly bizarre and outlandish comedy was so far ahead of its time, they had no idea what do with him and, honestly, probably still don’t. —Louis Fowler

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Sean Chase is dead. As played by Suicide Squad stuntman Zion Forrest Lee, the “beloved party animal and jackass womanizing pro hockey fuckboy” is laid to rest in the beginning minutes of Ankle Biters. How he got to his grave takes up the remainder and majority of this utterly wicked Canadian comedy.

Five months earlier, retired from the ice after a broken neck, Sean uncharacteristically wants to settle down with his gorgeous girlfriend, a young widow named Laura (a winning Marianthi Evans, Max Payne). In fact, he plans to propose to her at a romantic weekend at his lake house. The only obstacle is Laura’s four tag-along daughters (real-life Reid sisters Lily Gail, Rosalee, Violet and Dahlia): Try as Sean might, they hate him.

When they mistake Mom’s moans and bruises — both the result of sexual pleasure — for domestic abuse, their dislike of Sean festers to all-out war. His resulting tête-à-tête with the tots is like Problem Child times four (except funny) and infinitely more cynical. The girls are adorable, but don’t be fooled as every character is, Laura included; they’re devious monsters — juvenile delinquents with juice boxes.

A comedy as dark as its home country’s flag is red and white, Ankle Biters (aka Cherrypicker, which means zip out of context) marks the first feature for Bennet De Brabandere, who wrote the script from a story by leading man Lee (who, fun fact, is the son of Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe creator Damian Lee). Because their movie doesn’t have to cater to a family audience — or any audience, really — they relish the freedom to be savage.

I was with them almost all the way. You may not like where it goes, but as it crosses the line of good taste — once, twice, three times, who’s counting? — you certainly can’t accuse it of wussing out. —Rod Lott

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Thanks to the Oh, God! films I grew up with, when I think of the Lord Almighty in his human form, for better or worse, it’s typically in the guise of late comedian George Burns. In the trilogy, he aided grocery store produce manager John Denver, rode in a motorcycle with the single-monikered Louanne and, in his grandest casting ever, battled a doppelgänger devil over Ted Wass’ eternal soul.

It’s the third one, Oh, God! You Devil, that casts Burns as his own worst enemy, Satan. But instead of a devil who wants to murder and maim the world over, he instead uses evil to commit rather irritating pranks, usually the kind where someone falls into a wedding cake or pushes a couple of people into a pool.

Going by the name of Harry O. Tophet — “Tophet” is the Hebrew word for “hell,” so kudos on that — he comes across the path of failed songwriter Bobby (Wass, not to be confused with Craig Wasson, a regular mistake of mine), who, as you can guess, wants to make it big. He makes a deal with Tophet for instant stardom.

Being a deal with the devil, things don’t go exactly as Bobby thought. He is inserted into the body of rock star Billy Wayne and, for a while, things are great: fame, fortune and all the threesomes he can handle. Until, of course, he runs into his wife, who has no idea who he is; this meeting has him wanting to back out.

Too bad! As expected, the Prince of Darkness is a total asshole. With about 20 minutes of the film left, Burns enters the film as the deity you’d expect, God. They wager a game of high-stakes cards over Bobby’s soul, with stakes that make me feel a little uneasy.

Having not seen this entry since the constant HBO airings circa 1985, I was surprised by how much I actually liked it, despite it seeming like the cheapest film in an already cheap series. Wass — not Wasson! — is a decent enough foil for these satanic shenanigans, but Burns is likable even as the devil, even if he’s really not that far off from his interpretation of God.

I wonder how the actual God liked these movies though. I don’t want to step on any supernatural toes, mostly for the fear of eternal damnation. —Louis Fowler

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Janek Ambros’ Mondo Hollywoodland is as hard to describe as it is to fully engage with. Even going into it knowing the experience will prove as nonlinear as a thousand Hula-Hoops makes the sit no easier. With a spark-quick attention span forever at odds with the pacing of individual scenes, it’s not everyone’s cup of mescaline.

To those of us familiar with that most peculiar style of cult film — the “mondo” movie — it’s obvious this experimental comedy name-checks the 1967 documentary Mondo Hollywood, which merited a memorable passage in David Kerekes and David Slater’s exhaustive tome, Killing for Culture: “The subjects for the most part are dull. People of local character (hippies) with over inflated egos, freely expound on the loveliness of Hollywood and their important place in it. One young man is something of a recurring motif, running around the film doing a madcap impression of Bela Lugosi as Dracula. Elsewhere, a woman recounts how she loves colors and once ate a piece of crayon in a sandwich while on acid.”

In spirit if not always specifics, those four sentences apply here. Mondo Hollywoodland’s audience surrogate is an omniscient visitor from the fifth dimension with one mission on the mind: “But what is today’s Hollywood really like? Indeed, we shall seek the answer.” The visitor (Ted Evans) pledges to find that resolve via “the titans, the weirdos and the dreamers.” In and out we flit about from one character to another, through freakout transitions like an art-school editing exercise (and I mean that as a compliment). The survey reveals overlapping lives and scenarios that wouldn’t be out of place in Slacker, Richard Linklater’s microbudget ode to Austin, half a country away.

As with the latter, Hollywoodland appears to be heavily improvised, to a point that tests viewers’ patience and endurance. We get performance artists and dumpster divers, magic mushrooms and cocaine lines, a lost cat and a threat of rats, asshole agents and pompous teen stars. Although Ambros’ visuals often smack of the trippiest years of psychedelic ’60s, there’s contemporary talk of Antifa and Twilight, and one harsh — but funny — 9/11 joke.

Ambros and friends never appear incompetent on either side of the camera, but the film is frivolous without truly being fun. Perhaps — and this is possible — the movie works like gangbusters to the L.A. crowd it lampoons; either way, I felt excluded from the punchline. One thing’s for sure: Mondo Hollywoodland is produced — and assumedly funded — by James Cromwell, whom we know from the likes of L.A. Confidential and Babe. The actor did the same for Ambros’ previous film, the documentary Imminent Threat, but why this? I dunno, but that’ll do, pig. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.