The film opens with an interview featuring Buster, a crab louse living on a bikini-clad woman. The body crab spots Man, played by Tommy Chong, passing by and pounces onto his beard, only to be yanked off and tossed aside in a quick, comic scramble. Nearby, Pedro De Pacas, portrayed by Cheech Marin, drives down the street, spots Man, and pulls over to offer a ride. The two men escape into the night, and the body crab, sensing the lingering marijuana scent from their car, gives chase as the duo share a joint and cruise through congested streets. A police car slides in behind them, and in a tense, humorous moment, Man decides to gobble all the drugs in the car to prevent an arrest. The chase momentarily dissolves as the police car glides past, but the body crab meets a sudden, ridiculous end when it is struck by a train while still on the hunt.
Pedro and Man pull into a theater to park, wrestling with a tricky situation: a trunk contains two frightened people, and a broken key in the lock forces them to improvise. They attempt to avert detection by parking elsewhere, while a crowbar search proves fruitless. In a cheeky aside, Pedro exits to urinate on the trunk, which somehow reveals the people inside are panicked by the odor—an odd bit of hijinks that leads to the credits rolling inside the theater as the speaker announces the screening’s end. The pair grab snacks and depart, a chaotic rhythm intact with their misadventures.
The next sequence pivots to a skit with two dogs, and the body crab reappears in canine excrement, only to be crushed under Pedro’s shoe as he carries the creature home on the sole. Inside, they watch television with Man as a barrage of zany clips flickers across the screen. A scene from an interrogation film runs, followed by a drugs-themed gameshow, and then a zit-treatment commercial. A spoof of American Bandstand bleeds into the screen, before they switch channels again and Pedro unveils a colossal stuffed joint—stuffed with a sock—that nonetheless leaves them coughing. The body crab reappears at the window, only to be snatched away by a bird and set down far from the house. The crab then lands on the window of a doctor examining patients, continuing the absurd montage.
A comedic skit features a Jewish man and his child speaking with a doctor; the doctor attempts to remove a bullet from the child’s nose, and the bullet explodes, hurling the body crab across the frame. The camera then fixes on a product called Acapulco Gold—marijuana joints—while a commercial shoot for the product unfolds. Back at Pedro’s home, a knock rattles the door, and a voice claims to be the police. Pedro scrambles to dispose of his drugs as the door opens to reveal Man, who delivers a sly line: “April Fools.”
A fresh sequence shifts to Afghanistan where a newspaper article is presented and a skit unfolds. The body crab appears on someone’s shoulder in Afghanistan but is shot, and the camera zooms into a courtroom skit. Soon Man is revealed on trial, wandering the courtroom as he tries to collect drugs that would serve as evidence, a scatterbrained performance that unsettles his lawyer. He climbs onto the judge’s desk, then collapses, and the scene dissolves into a dreamlike sequence of him passed out on the floor at home. Pedro arrives and knocks, waking him, and the famous line “Dave’s not here” plays out as Pedro wrestles with the door and eventually gives in to tears. The body crab then hides under a deck board, only to be roasted as it turns into a vampire exposed to sunlight. Inside, Man settles to watch a TV segment titled Wake up America, a satirical take on the recording industry led by a Geraldo Rivera–style reporter who is removed from the studio in a chaotic scene. As Pedro strolls by, the body crab catches his scent and tries to dive onto him from a windowsill, but ends up zapped by an electric wire.
The final moments find Man on the phone at a diner, making a drug deal. After the call ends, Pedro makes a
