Unapologetically silly and barely coherent, ‘Evil Bong’ is a Stoner Comedy Horror movie that REALLY tries to ‘big up’ the horror side of it’s makeup, but cant take itself serious long enough to ever truely commit to the bit.
The plot? A dorky nerdy dorky dork moves in with a bunch of stoners of different orientations (Jock Stoner, Hippie Stoner…generic 90s style stoner) and it plays a bit like an ‘odd couple’ piece for a decent chunk of the first act, until the lads find a classified ad offering a mysterious, oversized and ancient Bong that hasnt seen any action since the 60’s.
The lads are keen and decide to pick it up. Little do they realise that this Bong is no mere waterpipe, and infact contains the restless spirit of an interdimensional weed demon who’s able to transport any tokers to a mysterious ‘strip club world’ where they’re slowly seduced and murdered in increasingly daft and bizarre ways.
I’d say it’s spoilers, but Tommy Chong is featured prominently on all the posters and promo materials for this, so inevitably, when he appears as the Bongs previous owner attempting to put an end to the…’happenings’. it’s on for young and old as our characters take on their weaknesses head on with the absolute base line of humour not that far behind them.
And; i’ve got to be honest when I say that; While this film, in my opinion, isnt very good. I do have a bit of a soft spot for it. The script bothers to have a plotline for about 20 minutes of the hour and 25 running time, at which point it falls into a cycle of the Evil Bong pulling our stoners into the strip club world, at which point it’s boobies and VERY soft gore on a cycle right up to the final act.
The first act is pretty solid all things considered, it sets things up, gives you a taster for the vibe and introduces our characters and the scenario in such a way that DOES have a draw and appeal to it. Unfortunately, the film gets stuck in one gear from that point right up to about 10 minutes off the end where just…nothing much really happens.
Its basically all padding for about 40-50 minutes in the middle of this thing, and it sags horrendously as a result. To the point that the production LITERALLY do the cinematic equivilent of jangling some shiny keys in front of the audience, in the form of 3-4 cameos from other well known Full Moon Franchises (Trancers, Demonic Toys and…Ooga Booga?…jesus christ…) Who basically turn up, say a couple lines or physically move about in the strip club scenes…and then exit stage left, never to be seen or referenced again. They could literally be edited out of the movie and noone would ever have known they were there to begin with.
The pacing is pretty nippy, in terms of how it rolls out the script, I did start to clock watch a little around the latter half of the second act, but given the film itself had more or less given up on trying to keep my attention by this point, I kind of feel like it was a mutual clockwatching experience all things considered.
The characters are all pretty one note, and while there IS character development, it comes WAY too late in the films runtime to really be useful to adding a bit more nuance to the script, so if you like ‘generic stoner’ acting and a nerdy performance that feels like something out of the latter offerings of the ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ sequels…well…you’ll probably quite like this.
Tommy Chongs character is pretty much the main reason to really stick around for this thing. he’s playing a slightly more wired take of his ‘Chong’ character and he’s easily the most entertaining part of this feature, especially towards the very end when the ‘final showdown’ really gets rolling.
The Evil Bong herself? is largely mute or murmering for most of the runtime in this one, I know in later films she gets MUCH MUCH more of a personality, but here? She doesnt really get a whole lot to say or do till the 3rd act, and what IS present in terms of character is basically just ‘Shes a bit sassy and swears a lot.’ and thats about it. All these elements kind of come together to produce a script thats basically the cinematic equivilent of a microwavable hamburger.
Direction is fine, this is directed by Band himself and it’s about as proficient a work as I could expect from him. technically its pretty sound for the most part, but its very much shot for function over form. the crew are working to capture what Band wants. But what Band seems to want here is to just ‘get the film in the can, and get back to his european castle vacation’ I cant fault the direction here on a technical level, other than to say that its a film thats coasting almost entirely on it’s gimmick to get people through the door and watching. it’s not pushing the envelope in any way more than that.
Same goes for direction of the cast. I get that he’s intentionally playing on stoner and nerd stereotypes and that this movies basically trying to be something of a throwback picture. But the thing with that is that, the films being used as the reference to throw back to here; actually had people behind them who wanted to entertain SOMEONE. they BELIEVED in what they were making sincerely to some degree and were writing with the genuine idea of wanting to make SOMEONE laugh…
This film doent have that sincerity to it to me, it feels like the team involved in making this, freebased a bunch of stoner movies; picked a few broad joke topics to work with and bashed out SOME kind of nonsense for our cast to just, get through and collect their paycheck…The cast dont seem to have been briefed much further than ‘Your a stoner…so speak slower and say ‘dude’ more often’ and while I think they do okay for a film of this quality and style, they can only work with what they’re given, and garbage going in is, at best, only going to mean cheesy awfulness coming out.
They’re largely locked in one type of emotion, most of them are crashed out or sat for the majority of the film and the one or two other people who ARNT out and out stoners who turn up in this thing are screechy and just plain annoying.
The cine is fairly lifeless. This was one of the bigger mistakes this film made in my opinion, they took a ‘We’ll styalize it in post’ attitude to the production, meaning a lot fo the film is shot quite wide (presumably they thought they could just crop in as and when required) there isnt a whole lot of B-roll leaving sequences often moving between 3 different angles with nothing to really help bring the sequences to life, and the bulk of the styalization has been done through post filtering and CGI.
The lighting is fairly flat (basically shot flat and tinted in post) and the edit itself could have easily been 15-20 minutes shorter and twice the better for it. I will compliment the set designers though, who have perfectly captured the ramshackled nature of a stoner house in the mid 2000’s…
I was GENUINELY surprised that this Full Moon Film ACTUALLY has a half decent and original soundtrack. largely rap and R&B tracks. its a breath of fresh air after 20 odd films scored by Richard Band and the Full Moon sound stock library. It gives the film a bit more of a sense of identity and I kind of dug it…Im actually quite surprised that Full Moon havent capitalised on this and done some kind of ‘Weed Green’ Vinyl pressing of the score…Im sure it’d shift more than 40 copies…
I’ve ragged on this film a fair bit, and it is a totally flawed production, As a work of cinema its dreadful. Sludge cinema of the highest order. But one thing ‘Full Moon’ have managed to do VERY well in the last 20 years or so, is produce films that you can switch your brain off too and just bathe in the cheap and cheerful ambience. and ‘Evil Bong’ is a great film to just have on in the background, checking in occasionally for the VERY quotable lines and strange on screen shenanigans.
The arguement of whether cinema can ever really truely be considered an ‘art form’ in the same way as paintings or sculpting has been raging for nearly a century at this point…’Evil Bong’ is strong evidence that it cant. But not every film necessarily NEEDS to be ‘The Seventh Seal’.
TYTD Reviews 