Welcome back to A SKIN-depth Look, and as you can see, we're now alternating our longer, more in-depth directors series with slightly less comprehensive topics. This week, we're looking at the granddaddy of the teen sex comedies, Porky's.
My first college girlfriend was appalled when I told her I hadn't seen Porky's. "Oh my gawd, it's my dad's favorite movie," she said in her New York accent that sounded comforting to me in the foothills of North Carolina. You'd better believe that on my first trip to meet the parents, we watched Porky's. With both of her parents. The whole thing. The three of them laughed and laughed and I just sat in disbelief that this was not only happening, but that this likely happened on the regular in this household. We broke up the following fall when she cheated on me over the summer.
For this reason, and this reason alone, I carried with me a hatred for Porky's. Not only was it a terrible movie, I also closely associated it with a person I now disliked. I couldn't bring myself to watch it in any of the ensuing 19 years, but in the interest of bettering myself professionally, I decided it was time to conquer the beast, so to speak.
Rewatching Porky's last night and seeing its two sequels for the first time, I can't say I have a better appreciation for these movies because they're all objectively bad movies. It's stunning to learn that Porky's was a monster hit in 1982. Gargantuan. It grossed over $100 million back in the days when tickets cost $2. It was the number one movie at the box office for eight straight weekends. Adjusted for inflation, it was a bigger hit than There's Something About Mary and Spider-Man: Homecoming, and about on par with Skyfall or Inception.
That is absolutely bananas to me, but being only three years old in 1982, I don't remember much about the cultural phenomena of the day. What I do know, however, is that films don't usually become enormous hits of that magnitude without some solid word of mouth, and I just don't understand beyond saying that it was all new at the time. Sure there had been Animal House, H.O.T.S., and other movies that had blended randy teens and copious amounts of nudity, but something about Porky's connected with audiences and spawned the teen boob comedy phenomenon.
All the elements that would come to define the genre are here—they're technically all there in the vastly superior Animal House as well—and for better or worse, Porky's is ground zero for the teen boob comedy explosion. The plots of the first two films are recycled almost whole cloth—minus a few details like the KKK—in the first two American Pie movies: a bunch of dudes determined to lose their virginity and use the resources available to them to accomplish this task. Yes, there are a lot of differences, but at their core, they're the exact same movie.
The first film is, of course, built around the shower sequence that occupies roughly three of the film's 98 minutes, but it's just about all anyone remembers about Porky's. And why not, it's a bunch of young, nubile twenty-somethings like Kaki Hunter and Allene Simmons playing high schoolers who—in the proud exploitation genre tradition—shower nude and show off "enough wool... to knit a sweater."
It's a total male fantasy come to life and shot as it is with the ends of the frame rounded off to mimic the peepholes, it was destined for legendary status. Kudos to the filmmakers for showing lots of cock in this movie, a bold move for a time when male frontal nudity was sparse in mainstream cinema.This, of course, includes this fleeting glimpse of Tommy's bemoled dick in the shower scene which, based on the way Nancy Parsons' Coach Balbricker handles it, was more than likely prosthetic...
The big revelation for many men in the audience, though, was Kim Cattrall. She had been around for six years prior to this, but this was her big breakthrough, and why shouldn't it have been? She flashed her ass in her film debut, Rosebud, and does likewise here. She plays a nymphomaniac who gets turned on by the smell of sweaty socks and jocks, and we see her bush and buns when Broadway actor Boyd Gaines whips off her skirt...
It's a real "star is born" kind of moment, and we wouldn't have Cattrall's amazing career without it...
As for the rest of the cast, it's no big surprise that none of them went on to do much outside of this genre, or the 1980s for that matter. Dan Monahan, who plays the ostensible lead role of Pee Wee, totally had his career stolen out from under him by Peter MacNicol, who is ultimately a vastly superior actor in this same type. Thankfully they'd all be back for the two sequels, though...
Enter Porky's II: The Next Day.Here’s where the Porky’s franchise has to beat its own path, define itself as being more than just a one-trick pony, continuing the adventures of our main characters, and watching how the events of the first film have changed them. Instead the movie opens with, I kid you not, a pop quiz about the first film before launching into a greatest hits montage using footage from the first film over the opening titles.I suppose that having come out in the nascent days of home video, most people could have legitimately forgotten what happened in the first film, but still, this is just lazy.
When the movie proper starts, we see Pee Wee’s in bed AGAIN. So we’re just gonna do the first movie over again, it seems, only this time he CAN’T get a boner, womp womp. So he rather tastefully uses a native woman in a National Geographic then does his classic Tarzan yell. Then Mom comes in and, zoinks, finds Pee Wee's boner chart, making her eyes bulge out of her head.
It goes on and on like this for the film's first thirty minutes or so, only with a lot more treacly sentimentality. A dramatic dialogue scene between Kaki Hunter and Dan Monahan goes on for an interminable length and feels like watching an Acting 101 scene study. I understand that's not what anyone is coming to Porky's II for, but the scene runs longer than the film's only female nude scene, so it's worth mentioning.
That's right, there's no shower scene redux here, odd considering they're not shy about repeating virtually every other big moment from the first film. Instead the film's only nudity comes from Cisse Cameron, who plays a prank on poor Pee Wee by pretending to die just before they can have sex in a graveyard...
It's a funny bit of physical comedy, but for a sequel to a boob comedy, these are the only boobs in the movie. What happened guys? I know Bob Clark was in full-on family mode trying to get A Christmas Story made, but this sequel is far too wholesome compared to the original. Some scenes have so much dead air in them, it's as if you could imagine Jean Shepherd's Christmas Story narration playing over the silence.
The KKK stuff seems ill-advised at best, but in case you haven't seen the movie, the school's Shakespeare festival comes under fire from a local religious fanatic. When he can't get it shut down, he turns to the KKK to support his ban as the production had cast a native Seminoleteenager in the role of Romeo, meaning he'd have to kiss Kaki Hunter's pure as the driven snow white girl Juliet. The prankster boys, of course, get the upper hand on the Klan, exposing their influence in local politics and leading them into a trap to get beaten senseless by the assembled Seminole community.
This sort of half-assed social commentary is present in the original film as well with the reconciliation between the meek Jewish kid and the bullying Tim. It didn't really work in that movie and it certainly doesn't work here, but you've got to admire Bob Clark for trying. After this, Clark moved on, but 20th Century Fox and the cast certainly hadn't, thus was born Porky's Revenge!
Porky’s Revenge! feels the most like it was made in the 80s. There’s a passable 80s-ness to the first two films that’sakin to Dirty Dancing where you still know it was made in the 80s but you can forgive the hair and other stuff. With Porky’s Revenge, all of that goes out the window. Doesn’t matter a whit. 80s hair galore, 80s fashion, 80s technology, it's absurd.
In an attempt to rectify the serious lack of boobs in The Next Day, this Bob Clark-less threequel features fun bags galoreincludingSwedish exchange student Inga (above) played by Kim Evenson. This sort of thing is getting the series back to its gratuitous roots, along with the scene where the guys break into the home of their teacher Mrs. Webster (Rose McVeigh) to steal the exam, only to find her and the guidance counselor doing some kinky role playing...
Of course Porky himself is denied the titular revenge and the boys save the day and get to graduate. Ultimately, these movies shouldn't have been called Porky's, they should have been called Grab Ass, because that's all these movies are. Ninety-plus minutes of grab ass and prank playing and other vaguely homoerotic male encounters masquerading as the ultimate in boys will be boys masculinity. In retrospect, it's almost as if Clark and company are playing a prank on the audience themselves, convincing them that this sort of boorish behavior is the best way to go through your formative years.
Having said that,I get the nostalgia for Porky’s, and what the movie represents more than what it actually is. Like huge breakout boob comedies that followed likeAmerican Pie and Wedding Crashers, they were a phenomenon and people are absolute suckers for movies like this, regardless of their non-boob related content. And Kat, if you're reading, I totally get why your family—and your dad in particular—enjoyed this movie. It's just not for me.
Check Out the Other Franchises in Our SKIN-depth Look Series
A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of the Terminator Franchise
A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of the James Bond Franchise
A SKIN-depth Look at 25 Years of the NC-17 Rating
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