Porky's

Young man rhythm got a hold on me, too. I got the writin' pneumonia and a bad case of the flu.

Watching Less Than Zero only made me feel groggier, so maybe it's time I aimed in a different direction. How about the sleeper hit of 1982, the definitive guy's movie and the most dubious trendsetter of early 1980s cinema? The film forever associated with locker room peeping, industrial-size rubbers and prank calls to Michael Hunt. The one and only, for better or for worse, it's either this or NyQuil...

PORKY'S
(R, 20th Century Fox, 94 mins., theatrical release date: March 19, 1982)

You know, Bob Clark used to have a pretty impressive resume, just like Dino De Laurentiis. I believe this on the strength of the horror movies he started out with in the early 1970s. Flanked regularly by screenwriter Alan Ormsby, Clark started out with the amateurish but promising Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, but the two really came into their stride in 1974, when they blitzed the screens with some highly influential, historically-revered shockers. Before audiences were introduced to Leatherface and his Texas chainsaw, Ormsby and Clark put to screen the grisly true crimes of Ed Gein in Deranged, and also did their previous Romero homage one better with the haunting ghost story/family drama Deathdream (Dead of Night). Those two movies also introduced someone named Tom Savini to the world, perhaps you've heard of him.

And then there was Black Christmas, which shares with Tobe Hooper's classic a preface to the coming ubiquity of the "slasher" film. This formula would be solidified and monetized by the popularity of Halloween and Friday the 13th, so I must give Bob Clark the credit he's due despite whatever opinions I or others may have said. He was an originator, a maker of great independent spook shows and deserved better than to go out on something like those Baby Geniuses stinkers.

And did you know he directed Jack Lemmon to an Oscar-nominated performance in Tribute?

But Clark's ultimate legacy in popular culture might not be A Christmas Story, but a project he allegedly spent 15 years fielding material for, drawing upon his own memories as those of his peers. Yes, we're talking about Porky's now. I was just spermatozoa when this film was spending eight weeks atop the U.S. box office and raking in hundreds of millions from North American audiences. It was the biggest success story in Canadian cinematic history until 2006, when the bilingual Bon Cop, Bad Cop and a Resident Evil sequel(?) usurped it.

To the dismay of Siskel & Ebert (and perhaps myself, to be honest), Porky's made enough bank to ensure an endless series of sniggering, superficial rites-of-passage flicks that are nowhere near the greatness of Animal House and more in league with such desperately raunchy fare as Gorp or The Hollywood Knights. Hell, Porky's wasn't even the first of its breed. You had nostalgia-fueled totems of adolescent irresponsibility as early as Summer of ‘42 and American Graffiti, and there was also Lemon Popsicle. Perhaps it was the audiences getting burnt out on the bastard sons of Friday the 13th that ensured Porky's outrageous success and stream of imitators, a few such as Risky Business and Revenge of the Nerds offering more than the same smug sex jokes. It is a sociological curiosity if not the over-hyped cause célèbre time would convince you.

But I'm not trying to write a term paper, I only want a satisfying film review. So here I am, sneezing my way through every paragraph, to give my take on Porky's. Let's sty one on.

In the great tradition of these "autobiographical" blackout sketch movies, there's not much I can say about the plot as a set-up. The setting is Angel Beach High School in Florida's Seward County, 1954. I assume Bob Clark was simply trying to reach the spot between between Robert Mulligan's 1942 and George Lucas' 1962, but he was 15 years old at the actual time this movie sticks its flag in. The central character is Edward Morris, affectionately/mockingly nicknamed "Pee Wee" (Dan Monahan), and he stupidly strains his member trying to hide his morning wood from his mother on this average school day. No wonder he gets further bent when he busts out the ruler to measure his "progress."

Among his circle of bros, Pee Wee is the most neurotic with his libido. He can't even think right when he's flaccid, let alone hard. This leads to him being gullible on a level that ought to demote him to the level of nerd, only he doesn't have the horn-rims. Recently, he's won the ridicule of Wendy the waitress (Kaki Hunter) for deigning to wear a condom before trying to score. He inadvertently eggs the campus behemoth, Anthony "Meat" Tuperello (Tony Ganios). And he outright hectors the hotshot alphas, Tommy Turner (Wyatt Knight) and Billy McCarty (Mark Herrier), into taking him along on a field trip to the shack of redhead prostitute Cherry Forever (Susan Clark). Naturally, it turns out to be too easy to be true.

Where there's a will, there's a way, so for Pee Wee and pals the path to sexual salvation compels them to Porky's, the fabled redneck dive further out in the Everglades. This time, the joke's on all of them, as Porky Wallace (Chuck Mitchell, four years before berating Lane Meyer) fails to deliver on the action, dumps them out in the swamp water and extorts the rest of their cash with the help of his brother, also the local sheriff (Alex Karras). This development doesn't sit well with Mickey Jarvis (Roger Wilson, previously seen on this site in Second Time Lucky), who alternates between driving back out for revenge and returning home with nastier signs of bodily harm.

The whole of Porky's is as erratic as the synopsis so far, shifting from convivial smut to not-quite-redeeming social value. The Angel Beach Boys finally work out a suitable comeuppance for the Wallaces, but that's saved until the very end. Outside of the blue ha-ha set pieces, there's a subplot for the boys' 23-year-old basketball coach, Roy Brackett (Boyd Gaines) and his pursuit of the luscious Miss Honeywell (Kim Cattrall), whom his mentor Mr. Goodenough (Bill Hindman) refers to as "Lassie," which confuses Brackett until he gets her alone in the laundry room. Also, there's lightweight friction between flagrant bigot Tim Cavanaugh (Cyril O'Reilly) and the Semitic Brian Schwartz (Scott Colomby), who can defend himself verbally and physically.

And then there's Coach Balbricker (Nancy Parsons), the corpulent laughingstock of both the student body and faculty. In a movie where the male leads provide their own laugh track in every scene, Parsons at least gets some deserving chuckles through her nonplussed reactions to their shenanigans. Alas, her prudish devotion to "moral turpitude" descends into psychotic mania, and the broader the character becomes, the nastier Clark treats her, and the more I want to see Parsons as the devious Ida Vincent in Motel Hell.

I want to like Porky's, I really do. The same way that I do Animal House or Slap Shot or Stripes or even Hardbodies! I crave vicarious belly laughs that thumb their nose at authority and explore the multiple ways attempted conquests can go farcically sour. Sometimes going through the "innocent" antics of past generations can be entertaining, hilarious, even insightful. I mean, American Graffiti is a gold standard for lots of reasons. And The 40-Year-Old Virgin, forget about it!

Porky's is also more of an equal-opportunity offender, take that as you will, than the shit it spawned. Yes, there is a lot of ooh-gling and ahh-gling, but at least in the case of Wendy and Honeywell, the girls can give as much as they take. The Angel Beach community feels like a community, where incompatible personalities can unite in some sense of pride (getting one over on Porky) or shame (the generational racism of Cavanaugh). And as the series went on, even Balbricker was humanized somewhat, although she doesn't escape the automatic instinct to mock the obese you find in politically-incorrect sops to the plebeian moviegoers.

It's just that the movie operates on this common tendency among raunchy comedies at the time to filter bygone eras through distinctly modern, unrepentantly vulgar eyes. When it works, you get Animal House, but they can also go way, waaayyyy too far, just look at the Lemon Popsicle series. Bob Clark wants to have his beaver hunt and shoot the ones in the barrel, too. That's how you get such thorny showstoppers as the peephole scene, where the boys reveal their outright hostility to the naked girls on show, who seem to take the voyeurism a little too in stride. It's also where you glean similarly unenlightened attitudes toward blacks and Jews, which at least pays dividends in the performance of Scott Colomby as the ostracized Schwartz, which is more natural than any of the other boys (honorable mention to Boyd Gaines from Fame and The Sure Thing).

Furthermore, the Porky's series as I recall is more about schadenfreude than the joys or dangers of sex. This prevents it from trying to develop a lot of unconvincing sincerity, which I guess beats the alternative as presented by the Lemon Popsicle franchise, but it's still conservative in its own way. By the end, Pee Wee is rewarded with sex after all his mania (again with Wendy, natch), but it's during the end credits and he's the only of the goon squad (read: I don't count Coach Brackett, even if he is one of the boys at heart) to actually make it. There's more fighting than fucking, which I guess says something abut the male ego. And except for a few token exceptions (Pee Wee, Meat, Wendy), the characters are interchangeable and acting is on a strictly sitcom level, right down to the overage actors feigning teenage attitudes (Grease, anyone?). Even Film Freak Central got it wrong when Travis Hoover mistook Mickey for Cavanaugh.

And on the basic level, Porky's is a hangout movie about schmoes who let it all hang out. You'd think something like this would be entertaining in an insinuating, loose manner, but sometimes Bob Clark shows a tendency to let moments stretch out to the point where the humor starts to get less of a reaction. The Honeywell scene drags on...and on...and even with Kim Cattrall baying in heat, Clark could've used a proper editor. It doesn't build to anything unexpected, it's just the joke about why they call her "Lassie." And for a lot of people, apparently that's enough. But it's just not good comedy.

Do I feel Porky's got extremely overrated? Yes, I do. But did I actually cave in and laugh at times? Well...like I said, Nancy Parsons is better at reactive giggles than others, and much of Dan Monahan's overbearing eagerness ("Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!" after he strips buck naked) delivers the titters. And Susan Clark as Cherry Forever, sizing up the studs in a single file line, she's amusingly salty. And if you had a prophylactic fit for King Kong (although Balbricker is nicknamed "Kong" constantly, another sour running joke), you'd blow it up and start ramming into every foxy lady's groin in sight for the amusement of your friends. It's not entirely an arid desert of comedy, if only because the enthusiasm of getting away with improper behavior is a reliable fantasy.

But to deny the film has problems is to admit to wearing blinders on your eyes. Having engaged in social media, I find myself inundated with a bevy of nostalgia for a period piece set in an era its audience would have little knowledge about. It's not like in 1981 we pined for Patti Page, Hank Williams and The Crew Cuts on our jukeboxes, right? (Well, as the Eighties continued, it certainly felt like a brazen attempt to recapture the Fifties) In the blaze of wisenheimer quips, innuendos and expletives, there are bound to be groaners, from the joke about angel food cake to the dopey deputies of the finale.

Bob Clark would remain proud of Porky's until his untimely death, getting his say in on a special edition DVD release, and its mammoth success remains undeniable. But in 2016, I can't help but feel that this will never turn up on a list of my all-time favorite comedies, eliciting nothing more than a shrug and minor confession of what did strike me as funny. Hardly proportionate to its status as the fifth most lucrative release of 1982 (luckily, Tootsie bested it as the year's blockbuster comedy). Sometimes, bad jokes are simply bad jokes, no matter how loud the canned laughter is. And though I think I prefer Porky's to much of its suckling spawn, that same year brought us Diner, which rings of greater truth and camaraderie. Porky's was a smash, but even though the reasons for it are obvious, I wouldn't want to wallow in that thought for too long.

Enchantéd, Pt. V: Second Time Lucky

Enchantéd: A Retrospective Tribute to Diane Franklin

V. Second Time Lucky (1984)

(R, United International Pictures)

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[ED: The following article has literally been ghostwritten by the spirit of John Bishop, who dictated this article to a close friend in the wake of an unanticipated heart attack after repeated viewings of both Summer Girl and Second Time Lucky. Until he has ailed enough to type the next article in this series, which is devoted to the movie that introduced him to Diane Franklin in the first place, all we have for now is this piece regarding the 1984 movie Second Time Lucky. Our best wishes go out to John and his closest friends and family...]

The overwhelming temptation with this review is to write about what every other person who has seen Second Time Lucky can only focus on, which is the slack-jawed, goo goo-eyed glory of watching Diane Franklin frolic about a New Zealand wilderness in the buff (and still managing to star in a PG-rated movie, at least in some territories). In all honesty, I can't deny the allure of such fanservice, myself, particularly because unlike the last two movies which displayed Diane's fantastic flesh, herein I can find only guiltless pleasure in the sight of a very beautiful, barenaked woman, the same one who stole my heart whilst keeping her clothes on (in Better Off Dead, natch), without the context fouling up my natural arousal.

Remember that in The Last American Virgin, Karen is twice stripped down in moments that are particularly unpleasant to watch. The first, of course, is her inevitable sexual encounter with the boorish Rick, which poor, lovesick Gary cannot effectively delay. The postmodern reading behind Gary's pursuit of Karen is that of a "stalker with a crush," and in this scene in particular, that description feels dangerously true. Although the viewer who actually believes in love would wish Gary had the fortitude to stand up for himself and for his feelings toward Karen, what if he did happen upon Karen and Rick making it in the press box? Very little he has done prior to that suggests a comfortable self-reliance in making his intentions clear. Chances are that if he caught them, he'd only be acting in the manner of a sad, teenage voyeur. The use of The Commodores' "Oh No" is another clue to the tragic futility of Gary’s adoration for Karen.

The second is Karen's stay at the abortion clinic, which the less said about it, the better. In both cases, Diane's nudity is deployed with proper context towards the downbeat story so that any deliberate ogling carries with it the sense of shame and sorrow.

Amityville II: The Possession, meanwhile, didn't linger as much on Diane's R-rated parts, framed primarily to showcase her body from the shoulders up and thus emphasizing natural facial expressions, a particularly poignant power Diane has as a performer, over gratuitous fanservice. The moments of more explicit nudity are fleeting and handled with more taste, which is surprising since Patricia Montelli doffs her nightgown to appease her evil-spirited brother Sonny and ends up getting violated in a particularly queasy fashion.

It took the network-aired MOW Summer Girl from 1983 to show some form of progress. This is the first movie in which Diane Franklin demonstrates sex appeal in a truly playful manner, rich with glamour, conviction and class. There are still a few notable implications, mainly in the first instances of calculated titillation used to ensnare Gavin/the viewer, first by having Cinni take her shirt off near an open window and then at the beach via her application of both water and lotion in a teasing manner. And that Cinni is the villain of the film does invite a correlation between her comfortable acceptance of her femininity and her impure schemes against the Shelburne household. Diane talks about this double-standard in her autobiography, but nevertheless she projects a mature attitude of seduction and is allowed a greater chance to become charismatic in her sensuality, not just merely desirable.

In Summer Girl, Cinni was a schizoid bombshell who slipped in and out of personalities to both give her an advantage and to demonstrate her instability. The Australian production Second Time Lucky is more generous towards Diane's character-oriented performance preferences, as she plays era-hopping variations on the Biblical persona of Eve all the way from the Book of Genesis to the New Wave, No Nukes modern world. Temptation is posited in several different period settings as Adam tries his best to resist in the name of both God and true love.

Yes, this is essentially a romantic farce which mines the classic Judeo-Christian fable of mankind’s fall from grace for erotic jokes and japes. The premise is that God in Heaven (Robert Morley) gets a collect call from his downstairs neighbor in Hades (Sir Robert Helpmann) challenging him to a "double or nothing" wager to see if man still has what it takes to uphold the saintliness and virtue of His image. Their pawns are two bespectacled college kids sitting aloof at a hedonistic frat party, conveniently named Adam and Evelyn and played with clear concessions towards the American teen market by Roger Wilson from Porky's and Diane Franklin from The Last American Virgin. It’s a typical meet-cute marathon session wherein hapless valedictorian Adam takes a tumble down the stairs and bumps into Evelyn, known by her friends as Eve, leading to a succession of toothy grins, wide eyes, and serendipitous sentence fragments. Of course, Adam accidentally stains Eve’s party dress and she unwittingly picks his room in which to change. And it’s expected that an elderly neighbor calls the police complaining of a disturbance of peace.

Adam doesn't predict the archangel Gabriel (John Gadsby), aka Gabby, to show up incognito as a motorbike cop and whisk him away to the Garden of Eden. Decreed as "the chosen one," the naïve Adam fails to catch on quickly in regards to what the setting dictates, and reluctant Gabby's vague instructions do him little service once Eve appears in a very familiar body, namely that of Evelyn. Adam plays along with the scenario as does Eve, who dutifully gets paid a visit by the snake, or merely Satan with a sock puppet, once she happens upon the Tree of Knowledge. The Devil dupes her into eating the apple, persuades her to offer one to Adam and, naturally, the first test is a smashing failure.

But God need not fear, as there's always a second time...and three more after that.

Gabby frequently reminds Adam of a certain "danger signal" involving a particular impulse that, if Adam had any cognizance (or the slightest history of arousal, despite protesting at one point that he feels like he’s been swindled into a skin flick), would immediately recognize. His second go takes place in ancient Rome during the Gallic war, wherein “Adameus” returns from battle to the cheers of Caesar (Lucifer) and his voluptuous vestal virgin fiancée Devia (Eve). She beckons Adameus to her nuptial bed and promptly seduces him into a stupor, allowing for Caesar to catch Adameus and sentence him to ignoble death in the Coliseum.

Round three is where the turnaround finally occurs, as Adam’s now an English soldier in WWI wounded by a bomb (a candle dropped down from on high by the frustrated Lord) and taken under the care of a comely French nurse (Eve). But she’s still the Devil's plaything, as Old Scratch resurfaces now as Wilhelm II and Eva is his top spy. They still get found out by the British army and Eva is placed on the firing line, where Adam realizes in the midst of a potential tryst that he's not supposed to give in to lust. But will his newfound freewill carry him through the rest of the tests, as he attempts to sway Eve into rediscovering her own immortal soul whilst the Devil thickly lays on the deceit?

Let's get this out of the way right now: Diane Franklin is really splendid in this movie. I mentioned that in Summer Girl, you could sense Diane’s growth as a creative, confident screen presence, building upon the promise of her first two film roles (I will leave Deadly Lessons alone, because that's the last movie I'd recommend to anyone who hasn't watched a single DF vehicle). With Second Time Lucky, Diane continues to prove herself an enchanting, relaxed actor of both boundless range and splendor. Seeing her as Devia in the Roman passage and as a gum-chewing blonde gangster moll named Evie in another Chicago-set vignette invites sincere comparisons to Liz Taylor and Jean Harlow, but Diane finds her own groove in every unique character and works wonderfully through vocal inflections and multiple body languages to make each personality dazzle.

Better Off Dead diehards (myself, included) should thrill to the revelation of watching Diane act with her first use of a French accent. The character of Eva is more than just a precursor to Monique Junet, though, especially in the direct sexiness Diane brings to this duplicitous nurse. Watching Eva come on to Adam in her cell provides the film its best moment of genuine steamy bliss, and when she taunts her executioners with a brazen flash of her breasts, accompanied by a snippet from "La Marseillaise," my own heart could do nothing except explode on the spot...just my luck.

The whole principal cast is encouraged to handle multiple personalities, including Franklin, Wilson, Gadsby, Helpmann, and John-Michael Howson as Satan's overeager emissary. Although not all of them rise to level of a Peter Sellers or Alec Guinness or Mel Brooks, they are occasionally fun to watch and do allow for some better appreciation of the performers. Wilson doesn't quite nail each Adam variant with the same finesse as Franklin (although he shares with her a sense of plucky humor: "Would you settle for demigod?" he concedes to a pompous Caesar), but gets better as he goes along. Although his injured English soldier looks very similar to Cary Elwes from The Princess Bride (he even says "As you wish" at one instance), Wilson's highlight remains his untouchable Prohibition copper Adam Smit in the film's funniest ("Is that what the chef recommends?"), most dramatic segment. Helpmann and Howson provide the movie more than its fair share of ham, camping it up recklessly in an attempt to make the film’s innuendo-laced dialogue sound more droll than it is on paper (Howson’s swishy Mark Antony surrogate communicates only in comically gay comebacks). The amiable Gadsby, meanwhile, is the brunt of some of the script’s most embarrassing dialogue (the "jolly roger" speech is a low) as Adam's hesitant celestial guide.

Would you believe this one-time Bo Derek vanity project was directed by Michael Anderson if I told you? Michael Anderson, Sr., the English journeyman who once scored the mother of all triple crowns in the 1950s with The Dam Busters and adaptations of both 1984 & Around the World in 80 Days, who later found cult esteem among genre fans for Logan's Run and Orca: The Killer Whale in the late 1970s? Anderson has an impeccable sense of scope and is one of the most generous directors any actress would seem fortunate to collaborate with. Even in a pan-and-scan DVD transfer that is regrettably murky and noisy at times, Second Time Lucky has production values of immense grandeur and a perky female lead who never stops brightening up the scenery. This is a pair of aces that desperately cries out for a full house of some serendipity that doesn't quite get dealt.

I will not chide the film for its predictability, as the opening makes it clear that Adam and Evelyn are preordained lovebirds meant for a duet, but the inconsistencies of the screenplay are tough to ignore. Begin with Adam, a real-life braniac whose commencement address hints at avoiding temptation but whose intelligence wavers between an understanding of God's will and a staggering density. He gets fooled close to three times until he knows exactly what the "danger signal" entails, which is kind of pathetic for a romantic lead let alone a young man of his age. Evelyn, too, betrays her own apparent smarts without explanation, which has the unwelcome hint of objectification despite the instinctive nuances Diane brings to the characters, who progressively develop a little more heart and soul with each passing reincarnation. Did Evelyn blindly agree to let the Devil possess her before she appears in Eden? I dunno, but at least there is no incest involved. Setting aside all manner of theological paradoxes, I'd rather just say that the love story element itself is rather contrived if ultimately cute and graced with some sweet chemistry.

Although it's not a trying experience if taken wholly as a lark, Second Time Lucky is scatterbrained and often too sophomoric for its own good, threatening to extinguish the honest sparks developing between Adam and Evelyn. Despite the best efforts of Roger Wilson and Diane Franklin, both of whom eclipse their prior libidinous glories as Mickey and Karen, one could easily forget there is supposed to be a love story by the time things wrap up with a sacrificial show of devotion spurned on by a cheater in the game. The greatest reward of watching this at least once (I don't suggest multiple times unless you're asking for an RSVP to '80s babe heaven the same way I did) is that Diane acquits herself very gracefully in preparation for the next entry in this series, one that offers up her most warming, lovable "babe" persona in the midst of a madcap suburban wonderland.

The Scorpion Releasing DVD release recycles the old 1.33:1 master from the antiquated Academy disc without much restoration, but Diane Franklin and veteran producer Tony Ginnane, a familiar voice from Scorpion's previous releases of The Day After Halloween and The Survivor, do allow for this edition to be truly special. They team up for an audio commentary and provide individual interviews, and Diane raids her photo book for some typically adorable behind-the-scenes stills. Ginnane continues to charm and inform in his native Australian brogue, but this is Diane's maiden voyage on bonus feature territory, and her hyperactive, super-enthusiastic personality is in full flight. Aside from referring to Evie as a "sexy dingbat" and continually marveling at the freedom of her performances repeatedly with a disarming sigh or cry of "oh my gosh," Diane also points out something not mentioned in her book: that Roger Wilson wrote and performed the song ("Radioactive Tears") which he uses to spit in the face of the Devil for the final segment.

Because of Franklin and Ginnane's participation, Second Time Lucky seems an apt description for this film’s American DVD release history.