Okay, all this talk about hallucinations and Miami Vice has prompted me to take you on a field trip back to 1978, when Philip Michael Thomas starred in an absolutely amazing anti-angel dust hysteria film known as Death Drug. I’m not sure it was ever released on DVD, which is a crime against art.

As you can see from that fantastic intro, Philip Michael Thomas re-released the film in 1985, after Miami Vice had earned him the adoration of a nation. But why would he do a thing like that?

See, Thomas was embarking upon a musical career. The actor decided that the best place to pimp his new R&B single “Just the Way I Planned It” was in the middle of an anti-PCP movie he had made 7 years earlier. Know that the music video — which stars Tubbs as some sweaty Space Christ — is shoehorned in with only the most meager of explanations.

But wait! We’ve seen the music — how is the acting in Death Drug? Well, this is easily the most poignant nursing home meltdown scene ever committed to the moving picture.

Similarly, this is the zenith of “man high on PCP imagines he’s combing his hair with an alligator” scenes.

Anyway, I’m going to go ahead and spoil the entire movie. By the end of Death Drug, Philip Michael Thomas’ musician characters is so pumped full of angel dust he loses his shit in a supermarket. In this epic finale, he sees rats in the produce aisle, spiders on his arm, and a store full of evil trick-or-treaters.

After using his PCP muscles to toss a grocery cart at the demon Price Chopper patrons, Philip Michael Thomas plays chicken with an inattentive trucker (who’s wearing sunglasses at night).

So ends our lengthy digression into the world of Death Drug. Back to alien James Brown.

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While we were watching Death Drug, a bunch of boring nonsensical shit happened. Seriously, after the hardest-working man in show business’ face melts a second time, things get aggressively stupid. A UFO fires a car-stopping photon beam at Crockett and Tubbs...

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...Trudy gets hypnotized into the peanut-butter-and-cuckoo-clock dimension (and is accused of dropping acid by the other cops)...

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...and James Brown warbles for a spell about alien abduction. He also gleefully watches Tubbs play chicken with some snoopy federal agents.

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Finally, we learn that Lou De Long’s a secret government agent (or some pap) but none of that matters! Why? Because this episode was all Trudy’s dream. Or was it?

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So yes, “Missing Hours” is easily the superbaddest 48 minutes of Miami Vice you’ll ever witness. To be fair, it was more watchable than that episode about the cryogenically frozen reggae singer.

Hat tip to OldWookiee for bringing this gem to our attention.