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Tommy Chong, left, and Cheech Marin in "Up in Smoke."

Cheech and Chong pollute screen

By Peter Bellamy

"Up in Smoke," with Cheech and Chong, the hard-rock comedians, should please those sympathetic to or allied with the drug-oriented generation.

It is sure to offend and nauseate those who find the constant use of dirty words disagreeable, and those who figure a movie might be better if not seeming so often to have been made in a men's toilet..

There's no question of moral tone or good taste; the script, written by Richard "Cheech" Marin, a Mexican-American, and Tommy Chong, a Chinese-Canadian, has neither.

The film is amoral and deliberately cheap. It has the dignity of a public comfort station.

The characters played by Cheech and Chong are either stoned out of their minds on pot, hashish; acid, uppers, downers or cocaine, or they are looking for pot, hashish, acid, uppers, downers or cocaine.

Their women are rutting pigs, usually spaced-out on drugs. A female judge in the story is made out to be a vodka-swill-

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In Review

ing lesbian. A mini-skirted narcotics agents sells drugs. All parents involved

are idiots.

The male narcotics agents are all abysmally stupid. There's a tasty scene in which Cheech and Chong are the cause of a group of nuns being busted for drugs. A travesty of the Hare Krishna is presented.

Since the dialog and humor never rises above the style of dirty words on the sidewalk, it's impossible to quote any of the punchier lines. It should go over big with the drug-oriented, comic-book mind.

Cheech of the waterfall mustache and Chong of the beard, mustache and Indian headband, are all-out hippy types. When not swearing, using four-letter words, belching, spitting or throwing up, they utter gibberish and mug outrageously.

But make no mistake about it. Cheech and Chong know what they are doing. They have toured the world and made a fortune with a shock vocabulary and songs of their own writing that heap scorn upon the establishment.

been gold or platinum recordings. They have an audience.

Intelligent adults should not waste scenely dull. their time or money. The movie is ob-

The skimpy plot relates the drugclouded adventures of two rock musicans, Cheech and Chong, in and between Los Angeles and Tijuana. The action includes. drug raids and Cheech and Chong's efforts to drive a van made of plastic pot to Los Angeles.

Cheech and Chong's "old ladies," has a Zane Busbu, as Jade East, one of face suggesting the most hardened madam this side of a Singapore crib joint. Edie Adams has a bit part that will not add to her luster.

One may only feel sorry for Stacy Keach as the dumb chief narcotics agent. Water is spit in his face and twice the ultimate nuisance is committed upon his person.

A number of Cheech and Chong compositions are played and sung, including "Earache My Eye," which reached the

Their first three albums were Grammy Award nominees. Others have Top 10.