Well I don’t know what the hell to think anymore folks. After yesterday I was expecting today to be another entry into what has become my descent into madness. I planned out this list thinking Witch-Owse would be stupid fun and that Evil Bong would be mind-numbingly stupid and lazy but it turns out I had it all backwards. I don’t know what to believe, the world has gone mad, up is down, red is blue, dogs and cats are living together, mass hysteria.
So I’m not really a drug guy. My lungs have a hard time handling smoke in the first place and even if I wasn’t scared that a DEA agent was going to blow a chunk of my head off with a tear-gas canister launched out of a canon if I possess even one pinch of pot, I just have a thing about intoxicants. I don’t even drink heavily unless I’m safely in my own home where someone I trust can deal with my dumb ass if need be. I don’t judge those that partake but I find the culture that’s been built around weed to be monumentally idiotic.
There is an entire subgenre of stupid stupid awful unfunny movies based on the subject of marijuana use, but there are a handful that seem to have been written by the sober or seemingly more lucid users that are hilarious. The rule of thumb is, if you don’t have to be stoned to enjoy it, it’s actually a good movie. Up in Smoke? Pass. Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie? Fail. Rolling Kansas? A+. Mac and Devon Go to High School? F-.
I firmly expected Evil Bong to be the sort of lazy dipshit stoner comedy that you find stacked fifteen deep in the $5 bin at every Wal-Mart. It’s certainly on par with what Charles Band was doing at that point in time and the trailer does nothing to dissuade me of this notion. Strangely, Evil Bong skews more toward his 90s crop of weird stupid movies that are eminently watchable than his early 00s crop of lazy schlock. I daresay there’s some spirit to this one.
So the gist is that Allistair (David Weidoff) moves into an apartment (actually just a large room) with three stoners: Brett the jock, Larnell the burnout, and Bachman the ultra burnout. The three roommates order an allegedly cursed bong from a magazine add. When the guys take a hit from the bong they are transported into a magical strip club where they’re greeted by characters from the Full Mooniverse: Tim Thomseron appears as Jack Deth from Trancers, Phil Fondacaro appears as his character Ivan from Decadent Evil, Jack Attack from Demonic Toys, The Gingerdead Man, Quinn from Crash-and-Burn, and Ooga Booga (I suppose I should cover one of the movies this little hate crime appear in since Charles Band seems to love him so much but I’ve watched the trailers for both Ooga Booga and Doll Graveyard and decided not to do that ever.)
A more accurate title for this movie would be Killer Bras as that’s the actual mechanism for all the murder scenes. The guys go to the phantom strip club and a woman clad in a bra with teeth or lips or shark mouths approach the men and then the bra kills them. The actual horror element really doesn’t do much for this movie, it’s a comedy more than anything. And there is some great comedy; the movie doesn’t go for lazy stoner jokes, instead focusing on what Charles Band does best: depict odd, borderline psychopathic, weirdos in everyday scenarios. One of the best scenes depicts Brett’s girlfriend Luanne, who apparently gets crazy amped up when she’s high, jumping around like a spastic five-year-old trying to get Brett to sleep with her, at one point she goes “I know how to turn you on” and then begins jumping up and down on a pogo stick, inflating a condom like a party balloon, and going “I’m horny I’m horny I’m horny I’m horny.”
Even when Tommy Chong shows up (I assume Jason Mewes was busy), it doesn’t feel as cheap as you would expect. Tommy Chong could easily phone it in in a walk-on role, but he doesn’t. Chong uses some of his atrophied comic muscles to create scenes that aren’t hilarious, but at least far more charming than they would’ve been with another lazy walk-on celebrity associated with pot (See: Rogen, Seth.)
Another thing I didn’t expect, this movie has a pretty decent score. It’s all pot-themed of course, but it’s catchy and listenable and I liked it. What’s more, I noticed it and that puts it well above the generic vaudevillian music these movies typically employ. I went into this thinking it would be awful but it’s surprisingly good. I can’t speak to the 4 sequels and one spin-off (the bong fights Gingerdead Man) and I would say that 6 Evil Bong movies is still seven-and-a-half too many but this was enjoyable enough on its own.
Watch, Toss, Or Buy? Watch it.
If You Liked This, Watch: Dead Man on Campus (1998), Up in Smoke (1978), Nice Dreams (1981), Reefer Madness (1936), Reefer Madness (2005), Half Baked (1998), Rolling Kansas (2003)