Bonginator’s Top 10 Movies to Watch While You’re High
You’ve got your cannabis of choice, the snacks are all figured out, your bud’s bringing the refreshments, and now all that’s left to do is spark up and figure out how you’re going to spend your next few hours becoming one with your furniture on 4/20. While we’d be the first to tell you to crank up Bonginator’s debut album The Intergalactic Gorebong of Deathpot, guitarist and vocalist Erik Thorstenn has a different suggestion: watch a fuckin’ movie!
With their album out today, we got Thorstenn to sit down and give us his top 10 movies to watch while you’re baked. So without further ado, here he goes:
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I haven’t watched a movie without smoking weed since I was probably like 7 years old — it just seems like a waste of time to me. It was really hard to narrow it down to 10 movies so I tried to go for movies that either fuck with your head or make you throw up from laughing. I’ve also enlisted the help of my good buddy Jack Shanahan (Scissorhash). He and I regularly get together spending entire days smoking weed, watching shot-on-video horror, and making bubble hash. I hope y’all can use this to find something you may not have seen before that you can get fucked up and watch with your friends. Ain’t nothing better then that.
Return of the Living Dead (1985)
Starting off we got the classic zombie flick Return of the Living Dead. Zombie movies aren’t typical stoner media, but this one hits a little different. It’s got that campy, low-budget charm and a lot of unique special effects, plus tons of little punk and metal references. Our song “Zombie Party Rockers” was inspired by the metalhead zombies seen on the cover art. “THEY’RE BACK FROM THE GRAVE AND READY TO PARTY!”
Fantastic Planet (1973)
Fantastic Planet (La Planete Sauvage) is an animated French film from 1973. It’s a super trippy movie making it perfect for when you’re baked. The animation style is super unique, almost resembling a painting. I used to get super high on all kinds of shit and watch the French version because it’s even trippier when you don’t know what’s happening. The soundtrack is also super funky and progressive, adding to the stoner appeal of the movie. This movie is great for weed but also highly recommended for any psychedelic if you’re into those.
Mac and Devin Go to High School (2011)
This movie had a lasting impact on me in my early days of being a stoner in high school. This movie is really bad and not even that funny, but that’s really what makes it great. You don’t laugh at any of the jokes, you laugh at the fact that Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa agreed to say them out loud. And you gotta love the sexist cutaways from narrator Slo Burn. I gotta give it credit though. I saw this movie when I was in high school and it taught me most of what I know about weed. If you haven’t seen it yet, you oughtta just sit through it. You’ll probably have fun.
Demons at the Door (2004)
This one is a real rarity, so don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of it. I’ve always been one to wince at direct to video movies, but this one is special. Load up on THC early and maybe take an edible to keep to going because this one hits the ground running and doesn’t give you much room to breathe.
The film revolves around a secret government research facility fighting off demons from Hell after a portal is opened by a terrorist attack. This film looks like it was shot on 16mm in the 80’s, but it was actually made in 2003. It’s got lots of laughable dialog, acting, and one-liners. What I love the most about it though is that they made the very bold decision to combine pretty solid practical monster and gore effects with digital effects that look like they were done by a 12 year old in Window’s Movie Maker. (Do kids these days still know about Window’s Movie Maker?) These effects will always catch you by surprise after watching some kind of genuinely nasty kill or dismemberment and remind you that you’re watching a movie made in 2003.
My SECOND favorite thing is that the soundtrack is almost entirely super early Insane Clown Posse cuts. When you hear Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope start to spit, shit’s about to get real. You’ll laugh yourself to tears the whole time and then the ending will knock you dead in the ground. A physical copy is nearly impossible to find since it’s long out of print, but it’s easy to find on that video website you love going on while you eat.
Mandy (2018)
I saw this this movie in a little theater and I got super baked first because I thought, “Haha, funny Nic Cage movie.” It was the right choice (it always is), but for so many more reasons than I thought. First off, this movie is beautiful. It’s absolutely mesmerizing to look at from start to finish. If you’re familiar with director Panos Cosmatos’ previous film, Beyond The Black Rainbow, this will come as no surprise. But it’s not just a pretty face, it’s full of substance. A gripping, heartbreaking revenge story, astounding performances by the entire cast, gruesome practical effects, and one of my favorite soundtracks of all time, done by the late Jóhann Jóhannsson. Oh, and the Cheddar Goblin.
Mandy will have you glued to the screen for the entire two-ish hour run time. Especially if you’re super baked like I was. It was an instant favorite and I preordered a physical copy as soon as I stepped out of the theater.
Pieces (1982)
Anyone that’s into shitty horror movies will probably tell you that Pieces is the best place to start. It’s a classic chainsaw flick that came out around the same time as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and it’s no wonder why this movie grew a huge cult following while TXCM took off. It has all the classic tropes of a low budget horror flick: shitty acting, poorly aligned overdubs, excessive nudity and LOTS of blood and gore.
This movie inspired the lyrics for our track “CHOPPED 2 PIECES” and I like to think that the music matches the campy and fun nature of the film. This movie is perfect for blazing, to quote the movie directly, “the greatest feeling in the world is smoking pot…”
Things (1989)
If you don’t get high before you watch Things, you might actually go insane. Your brain needs to be mushy and pliable to handle what Barry J. Gillis and friends are about to throw at you. Things is a cabin siege movie akin to Evil Dead, if Evil Dead was a movie about giant monster ant-spiders shot on Super-8 film by three or four drunken Canadians for $35,000. And it’s one of my favorite movies of all time.
It’s a masterpiece of trash that somehow found it’s way onto video store shelves and ruined countless lives ever since. I don’t want to try and explain too much because this is one you should hit as blind as possible. There are jackets in freezers, bestiality on TV, and things growing inside Doug Benson’s beloved Susan! Nothing I say here will prepare you for this movie. It’s going to break you. And know at the end, as you sit there confused, trying to maintain your sanity, it’s not the marijuana that did this to you.
Fire and Ice (1983)
Similar to Fantastic Planet, Fire and Ice is a great movie to watch while you’re baked because of its super unique animation style. The film was animated by Ralph Bakshi, who you might know from those old Lord of the Rings cartoons. The animation is done by tracing over live action film and it creates this super fluid motion I’ve never seen before. There is a sort of human touch to these old animated movies that gets lost these days with digital animation. It’s crazy to even fathom the amount of work and technical ability that was put into Bakshi’s works. This is the kind of movie you’ll wanna get real baked and absorb every single frame of its beauty.
Mad God (2021)
Continuing the theme of trippy animated movies, Mad God is a new movie that technically took 30 years to make. Describing the film is nearly impossible but it’s basically 80 minutes of the most disturbing stop motion visuals you’ve ever seen. The plot is almost non-existent and leaves a lot open to interpretation. This is another one of those movies that’s sick when you’re high because of how much it fucks with your head. You’re gonna have to roll a bunch of joints and watch this one a couple times.
Freddy Got Fingered (2001)
Freddy Got Fingered has been reviewed by many as the worst movie of all time, but anyone saying that is a certified dumb idiot. Tom Green tells a story of adventure, pain, and strife similar to that of the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer. The scene in which he jerks off the horse references the classic tale of Odysseus’ siege of Troy.
Green displays his technical genius through the use of iambic pentameter drawing literary parallels to the works of Shakespeare. If you like films like To Kill A Mockingbird, Citizen Kane, or Schindler’s List, you’d probably put Freddy Got Fingered right next to them in your laserdisc collection.
