CHEECH AND CHONG'S NEXT MOVIE (1980) (Blu-ray Review)

CHEECH AND CHONG'S NEXT MOVIE (1980)

Label: Shout! Factory/Shout Select 
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 95 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Tommy Chong
Cast: Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, Cassandra Peterson, Edie McClurg, Phil Hartman, John Paragon, Paul Reubens 

The Cheech and Chong movies were my introduction to the joys of r-rated stoner comedy and irreverent humor, I clearly remember marathoning the first three films on VHS when I was just a kid, it was on a sleepover at the Woodard's house, friends of the family, whose kids were around my age even if we were not close. It was a memorable night, one that culminated with one of my first deep adolescent make-out session, a weird and wonderful night with occasional breaks in the fumbling make-out session as the pretty young lady would make me cookies in her Easy Bake oven, we were that young! Needless to stay that night has stuck with me for decades, for various reasons, but I walked away from it with a love for the movies of Cheech and Chong and a series of awkward post make-out middle school encounters with the young lady, it turned out that it would be a one-night only romance, and apparently one that weirded us both out, as we spoke very little for the next seven years of school, right up till our graduation, and sadly she died not long after that in a car accident.

Anyway, 'nuff about my doomed adolescent romance, the sequel to Up In Smoke (1978) opens with our stoner-duo, low-rider dude Cheech and and his more laid back stoner friend Chong, illegally siphoning gas for their "borrowed" car, getting high while debating the merits of their current employment situations before blowing themselves up in a ball of fire, something having to do with gas fumes and lighting a joint I guess. From there the movie plays out as a series of humorous vignettes/sketches about the lovable losers as they set about creating their own brand of acid-rock and going to the unemployment office for a government handouts, a fun scene that culminates with Chong doing the nasty with a foxy girlfriend Donna (Evelyn Guerrero, The Toolbox Murders) on the floor of her office and an encounter with the "Man of 10,000 Sound Effects" Michael Winslow (from the Police Academy films), in his first on-screen role if my memory serves. 

The movie has very little plot other than the L.A. weed-heads looking to score weed and poontang, the pair are sort of separated for a large portion of the movie as Cheech kicks Chong out of their rundown house so he can score with Donna, sending Chong to pick-up his far out cousin Red (Marin in a dual role) while Cheech stays at home cleaning-up, ironing clothes, drinking tequila and eventually falling asleep, having a series of surreal doped-up dreams, including some strange Aztec necrophilia! Meanwhile Chong and yahoo Red embark on a series of wild L.A. adventures, beginning with Red being kicked-out of his hotel, with the obnoxious desk clerk (Paul Reubens, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure) holding his belongings for ransom until Red can pay for his room. When Chong learns that one of his duffel bags contains 20 pounds of primo homegrown weed the two plot to get it back, and once they do they embark on another series of scattershot L.A. adventures, heading to a brothel before being kicked out, hanging with one of the whores named Candy (Betty Kennedy) at a music shop where they jam out, then hooking up with a hip richie-rich woman named Gloria (Cheech's wife Rikki Marin, Nice Dreams), who takes the trio home to her parents sprawling mansion. Gloria's mother is played by the always shrill and funny Edie McClurg (Ferris Bueller's Day Off), and her father (Sy Kramer) just happens to be one of Candy's best clients at the whorehouse, with a penchant for tying her up, the horrifying encounter making him squirm in his seat over dinner.

Eventually all five end up in the families Rolls Royce smoking and giant-sized joint and headed for a comedy club where they once again encounter an angry Pee-wee Herman, ruining his set by taking it over, and causing him to be thrown out by a huge female bouncer (Faith Minton, The Wanderers). The episodic mess of a film ends with Red and Chong on the run from the law in a Ferrari, headed to his fabled field of week, ending with an alien abduction, yup, you heard me right, it goes there, but it doesn't end there. The aliens are super cool and give the pair a bag of "space coke", which Chong takes back to Cheech, literally sending the pair through the roof. 

The movie starts off strong, like the predecessor the narrative is loose, Cheech and Chong are hilarious, but the introduction of Red is when it begins to lose some steam in my opinion, he's just not that interesting of a character to watch, it feels padded, and I would have rather has our leads together on this adventure, it a bad idea and the movie suffers for it. I still like it but it's a step down from Up In Smoke, but still funny, just more flawed and padded. 

Audio/Video: The 70's stoner comedy classic arrives on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory as part of their Shout Select line, I don't think this is a new transfer from Shout!, but probably an HD master straight from Universal. The image is fairly crisp and pleasing, while there's not a lot of depth the grain is nicely managed and there's some decent fine detail. The English DTS-HD MA 2.0 audio exports the stoner jams, dialogue and Mark Davis (The Night Before) score nicely, also featuring songs great tunes from The Pretenders, Jimmy Reed, The Champs and Ray Charles among others, it has a great soundtrack, plus some Cheech and Chong originals like "Mexican American" and "Beaner". Optional English subtitles are included. 

For those curious, this version does not contain any of the legendary TV version footage, known as the "diamond" cut, containing additional scenes not included on the theatrical release, which if memory serves included an animated intro and scenes of them boarding the alien ship at the end. However, this is the original theatrical release with the original music score and dialogue intact, which had been altered on some previous home video releases. While I know fans were clamoring for the TV edit of this to be included I do commend Shout for rectifying the altered dialogue and music and staying true to the original theatrical version. 

Onto the extras we have the theatrical trailer, five minutes of radio spots and a brand new 19-min interview with Cheech Marin who speaks about the making of the movie, the influence of the L.A. characters they observed on the streets, the difference between making comedy albums and the movies, working with the Groundlings crew, how in real life that he and Chong were both very disciplined, health conscious and reserved. It's a good listen, would have loved a commentary or some input from writer/director/actor Tommy Chong, but what we do get is good. The release comes housed in a standard blue keepcase, with a sleeve of reversible artwork, both significant improvements over the awful 2003 DVD artwork from Universal.   

Special Features: 
- NEW Interview With Cheech Marin (19 min) HD 
- Theatrical Trailer (3 min) 
- Radio Spots (5 min) 


The movie is totally disjointed, directed by Tommy Chong himself, the movie doesn't have a lot of visual flair or style, but the comedy is strong and it always makes me laugh, a lot. Marin and Chong were pioneers of irreverent stoner comedy, both on LP and on film, and while the movie narrative is disjointed as Hell it still works for me on the whole, this is a fun, crude stoner jam. 3/5

DVD Review: FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR (1986)

FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR (1986) 

Studio: Second Sight Films

Region Code: 0 PAL 

Rating: Unrated

Duration: 86 Minutes

Video:16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen

Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles 

Director: Randal Kleiser

Cast: Joey Cramer, Howard Hessmen, Veronica Cartwright, Albie Whitaker, Sarah Jessica Parker, Paul Reubens

Synopsis: It’s 1978 and 12-year-old David Freeman is mysteriously knocked unconscious while out playing. He wakes up and heads for home only to find strangers living there. It’s now 1986 and he’s been missing for eight years. NASA believes he’s been abducted by aliens and want to use in him in their research. But with the guidance of a strange unseen entity he discovers a top-secret spaceship and with the help of MAX the computer sets off on an

incredible mission to get back to the past where he belongs.

Film: Damn, until I popped this one in I had completely forgotten catching this in theaters when I was just about thirteen years old, not a lot of it stuck with me either but after just a few minutes  I was overcomes with a wave of post-E.T. Spielbergian nostalgia. It's the 4th of July, 1978 and David Freeman (Joey Cramer) is a 12-year old kid living in Florida. It's the 4th of July as his family prepares for a night of fun he is sent to bring home his obnoxious younger brother Jeff (Albie Whitaker) who is at a friend's home. He shortcuts  through a small wooded area and stumbles into a small ravine knocking himself unconscious, he awakens after what seems like just a few moments, and walks backs home only to have his world crumble around him. He enters his house and against belief his family no longer lives there, it's somehow 8 years later, 1986,  and David hasn't aged a day.

Where did the eight years go and why has David not aged are just a few of the immediate mysterious at hand here. At about the same time NASA recovers a gleaming silver alien craft after it struck high voltage power lines. Could there be a link between these two odd occurrences  what do you think? This is a film that brought me right back to the mid-80's when Disney films weren't such sickeningly sweet pablum, there's a real sense of magic and wonder at play here that totally evokes films of similar caliber and subject matter like THE MONSTER SQUAD (1987) and THE GOONIES (1985) as well as Spielberg's E.T. (1982) with the it's kid vs. government themes and the friendly alien influence.

It's not long before NASA come looking for David having discovered a link between the two events, it seems that David's brain is stuffed with alien star charts way beyond our Earthly knowledge and David is reluctantly surrendered for observation to NASA scientists for a period of 48 hours under the watch of Dr. Faraday, played by Johnny Fever himself, Howard Hessmen of TV's WKRP In Cincinnati and DR. DETROIT (1983) fame - it just don't get any more 80's than that. Sequestered at NASA David meets a sweet young intern named Carolyn, played by a not-too-far-removed from TV's Square Pegs Sarah Jessica Parker, Lordy did I love me some SP! While poor David is becoming NASA's guinea pig he starts to receive telepathic transmissions from the alien craft, voiced by Paul Ruebens of PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (1985), a quick note that director Kleiser would go on to direct BIG TOP PEE-WEE (1988). Reuben's at one point cops quite a few of his own Pee Wee-isms for the voice of the alien craft's artificial intelligence named Max, it's fun stuff. With the help of the sympathetic Carolyn, David escapes from his room and into the hangar where the craft is kept, afterward Max and David form a partnership and escape endeavoring to find answers to the boy's many questions and just maybe find a way back to his own time. 

This was a fun revisit,  the film is oozing with 80's nostalgia and a true sense of wonder as only the 80's could offer. It's impossible for me to review this as a man nearing forty s I was instantly transformed back into a pie-eyed early teen staring up at the silver screen those many years ago and I'm pretty unapologetic about that, I love nostalgia. Sure, the film is dated in a lot of ways, maybe even more so than it's contemporaries of the era,  but it holds up on an emotional level. David as a young person displaced in time totally works, his suffering parents, played by Veronica Cartwright (ALIEN) and Cliff De Young (SHOCK TREATMENT),  are at their rope's end having painfully declared their son dead years earlier only to have him return, un-aged, the film is a lot deeper than your average Disney flick these days. Reubens as the ships computer voice Max is entertaining, at times it's just this side of being annoying but it's a fine performance and is the heart of the film's comedy.  Also an interesting aspect of the emotional dynamic is David's once younger brother Jeff (now played by Matt Adler) has now had his role reversed as the aged older brother, sixteen to David's eight, not to over sell it but there's some real emotional complexity at play here. 

The effects are also quite good for the time, the alien craft is a shimmering chrome vessel and an early adopter of the environmental mapping utilizing CGI to depict the alien craft and they are still quite solid, some of the more traditional stop-motion used to create the ship's suspended liquid stairs hold up considerably less but are still passable. One of my favorite series of effects in the film are the creatures on board the ship that Max has collected throughout the galaxy, definitely wanted to see more of these but one in particular does figure into the finale of the film. 

DVD:  The film is presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1). Colors look natural and nicely saturated though the image is a bit soft at times, I think owing more to the cinematic style it was filmed in more so than any fault of the transfer. Skin tones are a bit off and there's some minor white speckles and dirt, particularly in some of the effects shots,  but the black levels are quite decent. There doesn't appear to have been much Digital Noise Reduction applied, there's little evidence of artificial sharpening and there's a nice layer of film grain left intact. Overall, a very nice looking image if not spectacular.

The lone audio option is an English language Dolby Digital 2.0 mix with optional English subtitles. It offers up a solid presentation with clean dialogue, score and effects. Alan Silvestri's score comes through nicely and neither it nor the effects track drown the dialogue. Like the image itself it's not overly dynamic and doesn't offer a lot of stereo panning but it suffices and is probably true to the original theatrical presentation. 

The only bonus feature is an audio commentary with director Randal Kleiser and producer Jonathan Sanger and the two strike up a fun, nostalgic conversation with plenty of anecdotes to make for an interesting listen. A featurette, even a vintage one, or a trailer would have been appreciated but this UK exclusive commentary track is very nice.

Special Features:
- Audio commentary with director Randal Kleiser and producer Jonathan Sanger

Verdict: If you haven't seen this film in some time it 's deserving of a re watch, it maintains it's sense of 80's wonder and is still enormously fun family entertainment, my kids were sucked right in much the same way that I was at that age, it really hold up on an emotional level. I have lots of love for the UK's Second Sight Films for giving some attention to these niche cult films. Already having released RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, SHORT CIRCUIT and BASKET CASE: THE TRILOGY on Blu-ray we can look  forward to more awesome cult titles on the way in 2013 including David Cronenberg's SCANNERS and THE BROOD, SCANNERS 2, SCANNERS 3, Stuart Gordon's RE-ANIMATOR and FROM BEYOND, and Brian Yuzna's SOCIETY and BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR. The film is also available on Region "B" Blu-ray from Second Sight Films.  3.5 Outta 5