By Colonel Tobias McGleaner
[Editor's Note:Eulogist Colonel Tobias McGleaner is a highly decorated veteran of all four branches of the United States Armed Forces and occasional MrSkin.com correspondent. Today, the Colonel lowers the flag to half-staff and salutes a fallen fellow soldier, Porky's creator Bob Clark.]
Here lies an American, vivid as the red, white, and blue of Old Glory, and forever may he wave. Here lies Bob Clark, as varied and talented as the great land that gave birth to him on August 5, 1939, in New Orleans. Here kneels an American warrior to pay his respects to an American artist taken from us too soon on the heartless highways of the Pacific Palisades.
Bob Clark died with his son, Ariel, when their car was hit head-on by a drunk driver speeding in the wrong lane. I don't blame alcohol--it served me better than the Bible on many a long night in the foxhole--but I do blame our judicial system for undermining the punitive incentive of the death penalty. The intoxicated murderer of Clark and his child deserves nothing less than death, preferably at the hands of Clark's survivors.
It was in a Florida drive-in back in the dark era of this country's history called the '60s that I first caught a glimpse of what would become one of filmdom's greatest auteurs. I was taking a little R&R from Vietnam before serving my fourth tour of duty, doing what I usually do to relax, wrestling gators by day and sun-kissed cuties by night. I had one of those marshland missies cleaning my weaponry with her mouth as I caught kernels of greasy popcorn between my teeth and enjoyed the bottom half of a double feature. It was a little black-and-white exploitation flick called She-Man (1967).
The story of an army deserter played by Dorian Wayne who is blackmailed by a dominate female, who feeds the yellow-bellied lieutenant estrogen and forces him to dress in drag and work as her maid for a year, was a fearless indictment of our times and the hippies who swarmed north of the border like cockroaches to escape the draft. I was familiar with Wayne from his drag-queen act then popular in the South, so the ending of the movie was no surprise. But I filed away the name of the director/writer in my mind. This Bob Clark was one to watch.
Years later, back in 'Nam, at base camp, I was coming out of the shower having just washed what felt like a gallon of 'Cong guts off my naked body. It had been a good mission. The war was coming to a disgraceful end, but I was still not prepared to run with my tail between my legs.
The camp was quiet, too quiet. I reached for my rifle--I never shower without it--and stalked the campsite. But there was no enemy invasion. My troop was huddle together like girls scared out of their wits by a movie, a horror movie about zombies called Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972). I sat down to watch with them and admired the effectiveness of the work, which brought back pleasant memories of mayhem to match the smell of seared flesh in my nostrils. The director/writer of this great film was none other than Bob Clark.
He followed that up with a string of some of the most influential fright flicks ever filmed. There was Deathdream (1974), in which a young vet is killed in Vietnam and returns home as a zombie. It was another masterful stroke of social commentary not lost on the boys like me who managed to live through the hell of war only to return to an ungrateful and openly hostile United States--for shame!
But that was only the beginning. Black Christmas (1974) is the line in the sand. Afterward horror was never the same. Clark was one of the first to film from the killer's point of view as he eyes a household of sorority babes terrorized on Christmas break. This is arguably the first slasher movie, and as a soldier who's done his fair share of slashing I can say it is rendered with shocking realism.
The movie was remade (Black Christmas) under the same title in 2006. Though there is no way to improve on Clark's skill as a director, there was one fault I found in the original. Clark directed a bevy of beauties, including Olivia Hussey (Picture: ), Margot Kidder (Picture: ), and Andrea Martin (I always have a hard-on for girls who make me laugh), yet never showed any of them naked. The remake remedied that thanks to some flesh treats delivered by Karin Konoval (Picture: ) and Crystal Lowe (Picture: ).
The restless creative energy of Bob Clark wasn't satisfied to milk the cash cow he created with Black Christmas; he let the hacks do that. Clark was on the trail of other game in the crime drama Breaking Point (1976) and the Sherlock Holmes/Jack the Ripper mystery Murder by Decree (1979). He even adapted the tearjerker Broadway play Tribute (1980), with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick.
That was just a pre-lewd to what defined this man and the decade of the teen sex comedies that was the '80s. These were good times. Ronald Reagan was in office and my covert-operations unit was fully funded, locked and loaded for action. After a particularly successful kill, whether it be the leader of a South American drug cartel or anti-imperialist dictator, my team and I would unwind with a print of Porky's (1982), Clark's hilariously sexy remembrance of flings past.
From Kim Cattrall's (Picture: - ) balling in the boys' locker room and Kaki Hunter (Picture: ) and her gal pals' full-frontal shower scene to Pat Lee's (Picture: ) $2 titties, Porky's has it all. I laughed, I cried, and I came in my pants. It was just what a body needed to refresh before another bloody mission in the killing fields.
Porky's changed the landscape of the multiplex. The market was flooded with inferior product, so Clark had to step up to the plate and show the amateurs how it was done. He did this with Porky's II: The Next Day (1983), wisely picking up the action where the last film left off. Clark even went subtle with only Cisse Cameron (Picture: - ) getting naked. By only featuring Cisse's T&A, he made her skin that much more memorable. Her moonlight striptease always brightens my day.
As I said from the beginning, Clark is as American as apple pie, and America isn't just filled with the most gorgeous women in the world. We're rooted in tradition, and Clark knew this. After serving up sweet slices of female fur pie he focused on the beauty of our religious foundation and family values with the rewarding A Christmas Story (1983).
The movie doesn't dance to the sickening beat of political correctness. Our hero, the young Ralphie Parker, played by Peter Billingsley, wants a BB gun for Christmas. That brought a tear to this old soldier's eye, for it's just what I wanted as a young lad. When I found my gun under the Christmas tree I was so happy I immediately went outside in the snow and killed a couple of songbirds. It was my first clean kill. Their death cries were music to my ears.
Clark continued to push the envelope, refusing to be typecast by the pigeon-brained suits in Hollywood. He cast Sylvester Stallone as an urban cowboy opposite Dolly Parton in the underrated comedy Rhinestone (1984) and regained his creative clout with a series of hits, Baby Geniuses (1999) and SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004), which was the last film he directed.
Bob Clark still had more in him before he was . . . dispatched. I'm no conspiracy nut, but I've got top-secret clearance and have seen stranger things over the course of my career. Yes, I fear Bob Clark's death was no accident. It was a deliberate hit, an assassination, to blot out one of the only original visionaries of the big screen.
Well, the last laugh is with the true Americans who cherish Bob Clark. Howard Stern's Porky's (2007) has been announced, a remake of the Clark classic. It's still in development, but Stern, another voice of freedom, has the ball in his court, and I know he'll run with it. I can't wait to see the results. And if the assassin of Bob Clark is reading this, know that there's a tired old-dog soldier on one last mission who is on your scent. I'm gunning for you, bastard!
