Cheech, Chong Blow Their Doper Image in ‘Room’; 1951 British Production of ‘Wonderland’ Is Released

Comedians Richard (Cheech) Marin and Tommy Chong have built a career on low-brow drug jokes. Their best-known characters, Pedro and the Man, are two lovable, drugged-out dimwits.

In “Get Out of My Room,” the new Cheech and Chong videocassette (MCA, $29.95), drug humor is almost nonexistent. In fact, there’s only one drug joke.

“That image of us as dopers is over,” Marin said. “We wanted to avoid any dope jokes and concentrate on music and other kinds of comedy.”

They’re not worried, he added, that the absence of drug humor will scare away potential customers. “Fans of the dope jokes are dwindling anyway. The grosses of our movies are an indication of that. The fans have changed and the culture has changed. That counterculture dope humor doesn’t work like it used to.”

Is this cassette a bust without drug jokes? Not really. Cheech and Chong’s sophomoric silliness is fun and occasionally funny. The 53-minute cassette, made for the home-video market, consists of four music videos surrounded by a documentary on the making of the videos.

“The story in the documentary part is that Tommy doesn’t want to make videos, and I do,” Marin explained. “It features me as the inept film director and him as a guy who just wants to hang out. Tommy’s reluctance was real. We just used it as an element. It’s art imitating life.

“The documentary was improvised. Some of the situations were set up but we were improvising within the situations. We shot 8 to 10 hours of tape and edited it down to about 20 minutes.”

The music videos are based on songs from an MCA album also titled “Get Out of My Room,” which hasn’t sold very well. The most famous song is “Born in East L.A.,” a spoof of the Bruce Springsteen single. The album is the duo’s first in seven years and by far its most music-oriented.

These projects are primarily the work of Marin, who has been more interested in duo work than Chong, who has been living in Paris. Their film career, once thriving, ground to a halt last year with the flop of their movie “The Corsican Brothers.” The “Get Out of My Room” album and videocassette, their first projects since that disaster, may be their last for a while as a duo.

Cheech wants to continue in comedy and music as an actor and writer, but Chong is more interested in producing and directing movies.

“I’d like us to go on the road with a comedy act but he doesn’t want to go on the road,” Marin lamented. “He wants to do stuff on his own and he doesn’t want to do what I want to do. And I don’t want to do what he wants to do. I won’t say we’re breaking up but we’re sure headed in different directions.”

KIDVID: A captivating, rarely seen, 1951 British production of “Alice in Wonderland,” featuring actors and puppets, is out this week on Monterey Video at $39.95. Another gem released this week is “A Cricket in Times Square,” a 1973 animated movie about a cricket named Chester whose wings play violin music. This movie, from Family Home Entertainment at $19.95, has also had limited exposure.

Recent releases: “Care Bears: Vols. 1 and 2”--further animated adventures of the lovable bears, previously shown on TV, at $24.95 each from Karl-Lorimar. One of the best animated features available is “GoBots” (Karl-Lorimar, $39.95), which explains the origin of the superheroes from the planet GoBotron.

TOP CHILDREN’S CASSETTES

(complied by Video Insider magazine).

1--”Pinocchio” (Disney).

2--”The Care Bears Movie” (Vestron).

3--”He-Man and She-Ra, Secret of the Sword” (Magic Window).

4--”Rainbow Brite-Monstromurk Menace” (Children’s Video Library).

5--”Bugs Bunny’s Wacky Adventures” (Warner Video).

6--”World of Strawberry Shortcake” (Family Home Entertainment).

7--”Robin Hood” (Disney).

8--”She-Ra, Princess of Power, Vol. 1” (Magic Window).

9--”Dumbo” (Disney).

10--”Road Runner Vs. Wile E. Coyote” (Warner Video).

OLD MOVIES: Next week three worthy Westerns will be available from Warner Video at $59.95, Sam Peckinpah’s “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” (1969), “There Was a Crooked Man” (1970), with Henry Fonda and Kirk Douglas, and John Ford’s 1964 epic, “Cheyenne Autumn,” which stars Richard Widmark and includes footage cut shortly after its release.

Also in the stores early next week from Warner Video--at $29.98, about half their usual cost: John Wayne’s two finest Westerns, “Rio Bravo” (1959) and “The Searchers” (1956); “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” Robert Altman’s offbeat 1971 Western starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, and Sam Peckinpah’s incomparable “The Wild Bunch” (1969).

“Wild Bunch” buffs--there are apparently many of us--will appreciate that this is the full-length version. When shown on TV, editors chop out most of the violence, leaving a tame skeleton of a movie. I once saw this 142-minute movie edited down to 89 minutes.

“Oliver!” the musical that won the Oscar for the best movie of 1968, was recently released (RCA/Columbia, $79.95). A dubbed version of “Aguirre: The Wrath of God,” the 1972 German movie directed by Warner Herzog, is due next week (Continental, $39.95). It stars Klaus Kinski as the mad adventurer.

Released this week: “Shampoo”(1975), with Warren Beatty, (RCA/Columbia, $59.95); from Embassy at $39.95, “Dead End” (1937), with Humphrey Bogart, and the stunning “Richard III” (1955), directed by and starring Laurence Olivier; from Embassy at $59.95, “The Wild Angels,” the pioneer 1966 biker movie, and “Dreams”(1955), Ingmar Bergman’s fascinating but relatively obscure drama of sexual obsession.

NEW AND COMING MOVIES: January is shaping up as a big month for cassette debuts. In mid-month, RCA/Columbia is marketing “St. Elmo’s Fire,” one of last summer’s hits, starring Rob Lowe and Judd Nelson. The Michael J. Fox movie “Teen Wolf,” which raked in $33 million at the box office, is due Jan. 22 from Paramount. On Jan. 28, CBS-Fox is releasing “Red Sonja,” with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Brigitte Nielsen, and the Tom Hanks comedy/mystery, “The Man With One Red Shoe.”

Vestron has the rights to three current movies, “To Live and Die in L.A.,” “Twice in a Lifetime” and “Once Bitten,” which will be out in February or March of next year. Industry insiders are predicting the action-thriller “To Live and Die in L.A.” will be a rental smash.

The acclaimed “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” starring William Hurt, will be out in March or April of next year on Charter Entertainment, a new Embassy subdivision.

CBS/Fox will be releasing some major movies at various times during the first half of next year. The list includes the summer hit “Cocoon,” the Schwarzenegger thriller “Commando” and two current movies, “The Jewel of the Nile” and “Rocky IV,” which should wind up as the big box-office hit of this holiday season.

This week’s releases include “Fletch,” the comedy starring Chevy Chase (MCA, $79.95), and “A View to a Kill,” the latest James Bond caper starring Roger Moore and Grace Jones, from CBS-Fox at $79.98. Next week: Clint Eastwood’s “Pale Rider,” Disney’s “Return to Oz,” the sci-fi thriller “Lifeforce”--directed by Tobe Hooper, who did “Poltergeist”-- and another teen movie, “The Heavenly Kid.”

In two weeks, two teen-oriented movies, “D.A.R.Y.L.” and “Explorers,” are due from Paramount. “The Last Dragon,” featuring Vanity, will be out two days before Christmas.

Just released: “Gremlins,” “ A Code of Silence” and “Perfect.”

TOP VIDEOCASSETTES, RENTALS (Charts compiled by Billboard magazine)

1--”Beverly Hills Cop” (Paramount).

2--”Ghostbusters” (RCA/Columbia).

3--”The Breakfast Club” (MCA).

4--”Ladyhawke” (Warner Video).

5--”Amadeus” (Thorn/EMI/HBO)).

6--”Brewster’s Millions” (MCA).

7--”Vision Quest” (Warner Video).

8--”The Killing Fields” (Warner Video).

9--”Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment” (Warner Video).

10--”Gotcha” (MCA).

TOP VIDEOCASSETTES, SALES 1--”Beverly Hills Cop” (Paramount).

2--”Ghostbusters” (RCA/Columbia).

3--”Pinocchio” (Disney).

4--”Jane Fonda’s New Workout” (Karl-Lorimar).

5--”White Christmas” (Paramount).

6--”Jane Fonda’s Workout” (Karl-Lorimar).

7--”Dumbo” (Disney).

8--”Mary Poppins” (Disney).

9--”Amadeus” (Thorn/EMI/HBO).

10--”The Best of John Belushi” (Warner Video).