Porky’s

Bob Clark – 1982 – Canada

Definitely one of those you-had-to-be-there kind of films.  Watching Porky’s with any kind of perspective or maturity or solitude reveals it as the completely artless, boring and puerile film that its detractors have always known it to be.  Seeing it as a teenager during its debut run in ’82 with a group of pals is probably the only context in which the film would be rewarding.  And those high points – i.e. the meager but shameless female nudity – are far between; leaving the labored and retarded “comedy” to keep you entertained on only the shallowest level.  I assume the concept was to essentially make a dirty American Graffiti.  Though shot in Canada, the story is set in Florida in the 50s, where a handful of horny high school students care for little beyond spying on girls showering and plotting revenge on an evil brothel-owner named Porky.  To provide a bare minimum of social relevance, there is a heart-warming subplot involving anti-Semitism.  I’m not insensitive to the teen-sex-romp genre, (I’ve enjoyed a few), but I honestly didn’t laugh once, and I paid attention to the entire film just so I could say I experienced it.  It wasn’t exactly the first of its kind, but it was the most emblematic and influential.  Bob Clark was hardly an auteur, but his versatility and lack of pretention made some of his films quite interesting; this is the man who also gave us Black Christmas (1974), the Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper film Murder by Decree (1979) and – believe it or not – A Christmas Story (1983).