No, Paul Norman hasn't added Edmund Rostand (the original Cyrano De Bergerac) or Victor Hugo to his stable of writers, though you might think so. Norman's Hunchback of Notre Dame is a heartwarming, contemporary and slightly on-the-edge rendition of Hugo's immortal beauty and the beast classic.

In absolutely phenomenal makeup, Buck Adams plays a physically deformed, but spiritually beautiful janitor named Victor who quotes Victor Hugo at the wink of a drooping eye. You usually wind up in the physical state Buck is in when your sister is your mother, so kids, let this be a lesson. Don't intermarry. Anyway, Buck, who is fantastic in this show, works in a strip club where the girls taunt and make fun of him. They probably saw Cockateer (just kidding, it got a great rating). The only way Victor can get laid is by blindfolding hookers like K.C. Williams. It's a strange scene, but K.C. should definitely lose the ankle boots from now on.

Aja, who's looking like a neo-European Savannah these days with her new hairstyle, is the one girl in the club who takes pity on Buck. She probably saw Cockateer, too. Anyway, Aja looks the best she has in ages, especially in her sultry striptease.

"Ah, you're not ugly," she tells Buck as she stretches her gorgeous gams across a bar stool while he mops the floor. (So you think you're going to get objectivity from somebody whose character's name is Zelda?)

Rather than sink completely into the quicksand of sappiness, director Norman injects an interesting slimeball/shithouse philosopher to upset the apple cart. Ron Jeremy is great in this little part. As the club owner, he's got the hots for Zelda and is up to some skullduggery to get into her pants. And being a slimey club owner has its other advantages, too. Jeremy, who talks like Wolfman Jack in this role, louses up a really good opportunity to win a non-sex award by having sex with the sinfully pretty Kim Katain and Alyssa Jareau. Well, Jeremy has to break in all the new girls. It's kind of like a King Kong/Fay Wray sacrifice-thing.

A nearly perfect video, the only point where I think director Norman louses up, comes during a touching and bizarre point in the Buck Adams/Aja love scene when he brings in Alyssa Jarreau from out of left field. A threesome destroys the totality and tenderness of the Aja/Adams coupling and just makes no sense. Yet this can be forgiven when measuring all this show's other sterling qualities. We're definitely looking at many major awards nominations here.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a tender piece of adult video melodrama that should hold up as a classic for years to come. I have a hunch you should stock this right now in your video stores without delay.