A group of college stoners order a possessed bong from an ad and find out it has magical properties while also delivering a quality high.  Oh, the bong is also alive and whisks them off to a dream world to meet their hilarious and untimely dooms.

Judging a Book by its Cover

-If you want your weed-referencing movie to have some immediate street cred, you hire yourself Tommy Chong, ladies and gentlemen!  (He’s much cheaper than Cheech.)

-Tommy looks a little miffed in that picture.  Or maybe they caught him off guard.

-I hope the movie is funnier beyond “the bong has a face.”

This is one killer trip!

Directed by Charles Band

Starring David Weidoff, John Patrick Jordan and Tommy Chong

Nerdy college freshman Alistair answers an ad for a new dorm roommate and meets with Larnell, Mitch and Brian, a trio of stoners who all share the living quarters.  The rent is cheap so Alistair agrees to stay even though he doesn’t partake in the “bros” favorite past time of rocking the ganja.

What are you staring at?

Everything is as close to normal as it should be until Larnell receives a delivery.  It’s that giant, possessed bong he ordered from an ad he saw in High Times!  Even though I would consider more hookah than bong (who would watch a movie called Evil Hookah?) it works like magic!  In fact, it is just like magic!  As people smoke from E.B., she sends them into a hazy dream world where they meet their demise and she grows more powerful.

Fear me, for I am bong!

This “dream world” I speak of is actually a strip club where E.B. is protected by the front door security guard.  She seduces the victims with naked strippers who then kill their victims with their fully merchandized Monster Bra (TM) while random Full Moon characters both new (Gingerdead Man and Ooga Booga who both, by the way, are also masturbating in their scenes) and old (Phil Fondacaro, Tim Thomerson.)  Even Bill Moseley shows up for a brief cameo to ask where the exit is.  I wouldn’t blame him with the masturbating puppets in a club where strippers put on clothes to kill their victims.

Got change for a twenty?

For an evil bong, there isn’t much to E.B.  I mean, she’s a bong.  Or a hookah.  It’s barely a puppet; the eyes move and maybe the mouth moves but certainly not to the sassy backtalking that voice actress Michelle Mais brings to the character.  The hoses on the body move sometimes and E.B. rocks about when she talks.  I guess there’s only so much you can do with an inanimate object, no matter how evil it is, but it’s still kind of lame.

You shall not, like, pass, man. Unless its a doob.

Evil Bong is a stoner horror/comedy that either tries too hard or not enough to be funny and rarely finds that sweet spot of funny.  Admittedly there are a few laughs to be had but they’re few and far between among the jokes and gags that consistently miss the funny bone.  It seems more effort was put into the weed-oriented soundtrack than the script.  The movie comes off more like a sitcom complete with interstitials between the scenes.  Why are they there?  Maybe to pad the running time, I’m not sure.  The film must’ve found success somewhere, the fifth film in the series is coming out soon SEVENTH came out last year.  Hopefully, they’ve gotten better because I know I’ll come around to them eventually.

TL;DR

Story: 4 – Stoners get the trip of a lifetime when their new bong winds up being possessed by an evil spirit that yearns to conquer humanity, one puff at a time.  Sounds great until you witness stoners getting killed by plastic bras in a strip club.  What happened?

Blood: 3 – Honestly, it’s pretty light on the blood but that’s to be expected in this type of film.  Getting killed by cheap, plastic bras is pretty stupid.

Nudity: 9 – A good portion of the film takes place in a strip club with some very lovely and endowed employees working there.

Overall: 4 – It’s admirable that Charles Band wanted to target the stoner comedy genre and give it a Full Moon twist but the first pass with the Evil Bong doesn’t deliver the highs you’re looking for.

Trivia

-The film spawned a franchise with sequels called King Bong, Wrath of Bong, 4:20, High Five, 666 and 777.

-The series also crossed paths with another, newer Full Moon series and we got Gingerdead Man vs. Evil Bong.  See what you’ve been missing out on?