Tonight a new 35 millimeter print of Cheech & Chong's third film "Nice Dreams" (1981) screens at the Colony Theater in North Raleigh.
The show which is the latest entry in the Colony's popular "Cool Classics" series starts at 8:00 PM and tickets are just $5.00 for an hour and a half of stoner silliness plus "flashback" trailers before the show.
Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong, who have recently re-united as a comic duo, once again play themselves in a sloppy crude comedy about selling marijuana under the guise of ice cream vending.
Stacy Keach, who graced the Colony's screen in Cinema Overdrive's presentation of "Road Games" earlier this year, reprises his role as Sgt. Stedenko from Cheech & Chong's first film "Up In Smoke". Stedenko lives by the credo "the only way to catch a doper is for you yourself to become a smoker" and sets about "analysing" pot that was seized by undercover cops.
The weed comes from a plantation run by Weird Jimmy (Jimmy Fame) and as it turns out has a crazy side effect. Stedenko slowly turns into a lizard after heavily indulging in the substance.
Meanwhile Cheech & Chong get into a series of misadventures involving Cheech's ex-girlfriend (Evelyn Guerrero from their previous film "Cheech & Chong's Next Movie"), mental institution mishaps, and Paul Reubens (A.K.A. Pee Wee Herman) as Howie Hamburger Dude who somehow gets ahold of the dope duo's marijuana millions.
There is a cameo by famed pyschedelic drug guru Timothy Leary who President Nixon had once called "the most dangerous man in America."
As one of the last gasps of the '60s counterculture "Nice Dreams" may be very dated, but it has its moments especially when Reubens appears.
Cheech & Chong's films were never critically acclaimed - the film has a 43% rating on the Rotten Tomatometer - yet there is a cult appeal still present. They performed to a huge crowd at the Durham Performing Arts Center last April and just yesterday they were honored by a 10-foot replica guitar outside the Roxy Theatre on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.
So whether it's to relive old memories of movies that were cable mainstays back in the '80s or to see what old hippy humor was like in its heyday, come to the Colony Theater tonight to breathe in the cinematic equivalent of second hand smoke.
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