THINGS ARE TOUGH ALL OVER was the fourth Cheech & Chong film since 1978's UP IN SMOKE (following 1980's CHEECH & CHONG'S NEXT MOVIE and 1981's CHEECH & CHONG'S NICE DREAMS). UP IN SMOKE is easily the duo's best film, but after THINGS ARE TOUGH ALL OVER, the formula got pretty stale. The next May, they starred in STILL SMOKIN', a haphazardly-constructed travelogue/concert film, and a month after that, appeared in the Monty Python offshoot YELLOWBEARD. After 1984's THE CORSICAN BROTHERS, the pair went their separate ways. In THINGS ARE TOUGH ALL OVER, the expected stoner jokes abound as the hapless pair are car wash employees hired by two Arab criminals (also played by Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong) to transport a car full of laundered money cross country.
THE PIRATE MOVIE was a musical/comedy very loosely based on The Pirates of Penzance, which itself was given an official movie adaptation a year later. Directed by veteran journeyman Ken Annakin (THE LONGEST DAY, BATTLE OF THE BULGE, THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES), THE PIRATE MOVIE was universally panned and bombed at the box office. It did little to further the big screen careers of its stars: the popular Kristy McNichol (TV's FAMILY, LITTLE DARLINGS) would star in a few more films and was dogged for years by rumors of drug abuse and unreliability. McNichol spent a few seasons as Richard Mulligan's daughter on NBC's EMPTY NEST, and left the series when she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1992. She did a few voice acting gigs for animated TV shows, but retired from acting altogether in 1998. Christopher Atkins was hot off of 1980's THE BLUE LAGOON and on his way to the male stripper favorite A NIGHT IN HEAVEN and a one-season run on DALLAS, but by 1987, he would be headlining the D-grade Mexican nature-gone-amok horror film BEAKS: THE MOVIE. Atkins has worked steadily to this day in low-budget DTV fare (PROJECT SHADOWCHASER III) and occasional TV guest spots, but is still recognized primarily for THE BLUE LAGOON, most recently appearing in a cameo in the Lifetime movie BLUE LAGOON: THE AWAKENING.
Annakin would only complete one more film--1988's THE NEW ADVENTURES OF PIPPI LONGSTOCKING--though he did co-direct (with Antonio Margheriti) the legendarily-troubled Italian production GENGHIS KHAN, which starred Richard Tyson, Charlton Heston, John Saxon, Rodney A. Grant, and Pat Morita. GENGHIS KHAN began shooting in the Soviet Union in 1991 but production was halted during the August Coup and never resumed. Enough was shot that Annakin made a few attempts to complete the film over the years--even after Margheriti's death in 2002--but was unsuccessful. Annakin died in 2009 at the age of 94, with his final film left incomplete. Once every few years, there's a blurb that GENGHIS KHAN is about to be released (most recently in 2010), usually by whatever new fly-by-night company that recently acquired it in a liquidation, but other than shoddy-looking bootlegs, it hasn't happened. It's one of those infamously lost train wrecks that can't possibly be as interesting as its backstory (especially with "Buddy Revell" from THREE O'CLOCK HIGH as the title character), but if nothing else, this trailer (from a planned 2006 release that never happened), while misspelling co-star Julia Nickson-Soul's name, at least verifies that GENGHIS KHAN indeed exists in some patched-together capacity
TOP TEN FILMS FOR THE WEEKEND OF AUGUST 6, 1982 (from www.boxofficemojo.com)
1. E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL
2. THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS
3. THINGS ARE TOUGH ALL OVER
4. AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN
5. THE PIRATE MOVIE
6. ROCKY III
7. NIGHT SHIFT
8. YOUNG DOCTORS IN LOVE
9. POLTERGEIST
10. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP
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