Evil Bong 2: King Bong (2009) and How It Improves Upon Its Predecessor

Around this time last year, I watched a movie for the Sunday “Bad” Movies that became one of my biggest disappointments.  That movie was Evil Bong.  I went into it expecting a stoner horror-comedy about a bong that was killing people.  I sort of got what I expected, but I also ended up with a bunch of self-serving call backs to other movies released by Full Moon Horror.  Those call backs distracted from the movie because more focus was put upon them than the original material in Evil Bong.  It wasn’t good at all.

Evil Bong 2: King Bong safely put any fears of the same self-promotion to rest by opting not to have any cameos from other Full Moon Horror franchises in it.  Instead, we are given a story about the characters introduced in Evil Bong, and a couple more characters introduced in this sequel.  No longer are we subjected to an onslaught of characters unrelated to the story, showing up just to say hi.  This strengthens the premise in a way that makes the sequel more satisfying than its predecessor.

The story of Evil Bong 2: King Bong is fairly simple.  After destroying the bong from the first Evil Bong, the characters are experiencing severe side effects.  Bachman (Mitch Eakins) has become a narcoleptic.  Brett (Brian Lloyd) has gained a lot of weight after eating a lot.  Larnell (John Patrick Jordan) has a heightened sex drive all the time.  They bring in their old roommate Alistair (Brett Chukerman) to help them out with these problems.  He decides that they should go to where the Evil Bong was made to find cures to their ailments.  While there, the group runs into the King Bong, an even worse bong than the Evil Bong.  They must fight to defeat it.

Evil Bong 2: King Bong is a case of a sequel done properly.  I am not trying to say that the movie is an overall good movie or anything of that sort.  It really isn’t that good.  But it takes a concept set up by the first movie and expands upon it in a way that strengthens the ideas.  The sequel removes any of the unnecessary fat that was in the first movie.  The characters are expanded on, some much more than others.  The needless cameos are non-existent.  And there is a backstory given to the Evil Bong that helps to enlighten any viewers on what is happening.

Let’s take a look at the characters and how they have grown since Evil Bong.  In terms of the smaller amount of growth, you have Brett and Bachman.  Brett has managed to get a career in baseball, and Bachman is working at a fast food restaurant.  Plus, there is Brett’s size, of course.  He grows in size.  Aside from those minor things, those two characters are the same.  Alistair, I don’t remember much about from the first movie other than he got a girlfriend.  She’s not even mentioned in the sequel, I don’t think.  Larnell’s grandfather gets to walk in Evil Bong 2: King Bong.  He also gets to be the greedy, money grabbing human villain of the movie.  That’s more than crotchety old handicapped guy from the first movie.  There’s also the delivery guy who is a major part of the sequel though he was only in a bit of the first movie.

The two big growths of character in the sequel are Larnell and the Evil Bong.  The Evil Bong has her history fleshed out in the sequel in a way that I wasn’t expecting.  She had been in a relationship with the King Bong in the past and the King Bong had betrayed her.  This was back when the Evil Bong was in South America.  There was also some weird magic Poontang Tribe stuff in the creation of the bongs.  It all helped to make the Evil Bong a little more sympathetic than in her first outing.  As for Larnell, the guy got to be the romantic lead.  He was the one who got the woman in the end, after overcoming his humping issues.  It was a new layer to a character whose initial outing was essentially in the best buddy role.

The romance doesn’t begin until the four former roommates travel to South America to find the source of their Evil Bong side effects.  There they discover a scientific study that is being done to research any and all healing attributes of the marijuana in the area.  Is this realistic?  Not really.  Not because of the healing qualities, which could arguably be there for some things.  The fact that the scientific research is being done without any interference by drug cartels doesn’t make a lot of sense.  This is all beside the point though.  Through this research, the guys learn about the Poontang Tribe and the origins of the Evil Bong.  They discover that the Poontang Tribe is real and there’s an even more evil bong called King Bong.  The find out the origins of the Evil Bong, and figure out that there are actually healing powers in the marijuana.  It’s backstory that was lacking in the first movie and helped to strengthen the sequel.

Yet the biggest strength that Evil Bong 2: King Bong has over the first movie is the fact that it does not have the many cameos that the first movie had.  The sequel was able to focus solely on the characters of the Evil Bong franchise, instead of inserting a bunch of characters from other Full Moon franchises.  The biggest problem in the first Evil Bong movie was the endless onslaught of cameos.  Every time that the movie started moving along, it had to stop to insert another character that people knew from a different franchise.  It brought everything to a halt.  It did nothing for the movie.  Evil Bong 2: King Bong does not have that problem and manages to chug along at a fairly even pace.  There are no painful pauses to include outside characters in the franchise.

With these additions and subtractions for the second movie in the Evil Bong franchise, the product was noticeably better.  It wasn’t a great movie by any means.  It’s still bad.  There’s bad acting, the locations aren’t all that great, and the character design of the bongs is still laughable.  But Evil Bong 2: King Bong is a step up from the movie that came before it.  It’s more enjoyable.  When it comes to bad movies, that’s all that counts.

Also enjoyable are my notes.  Right?  Right?  Here they are:

• Six actors were in both Evil Bong and Evil Bong 2: King Bong.  These actors were Robin Sydney, Sonny Carl Davis, Mitch Eakins, John Patrick Jordan, Brian Lloyd, and Jacob Witkin.
• Robin Sydney was also in The Gingerdead Man, directed by Charles Band, the director of both Evil Bong movies.
• Director Charles Band was also involved in the making of Robot Jox and Robot Wars.
• I watched this movie on a DVD released by Echo Bridge.  I wrote about Echo Bridge in the post for Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned.
• Have you seen any of the Evil Bong movies?  Should I cover Evil Bong 3: The Wrath of Bong at some point?  Do you have any other thoughts?  There is a comments section below where you can discuss these movies.
• If you have a suggestion for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can leave it in the comments, email me at sundaybadmovies@gmail.com or tell me on Twitter.  All suggestions go into a master list from which I choose movies for scheduling.
• If you want a question about the Sunday “Bad” Movies answered in this month’s bonus post, you can email it to me.  I want questions.  Email them.