Porky's was the first movie my wife and I watched together, when we met in college. Twenty years later it remains the worst movie we've watched together.
I know I’ve seen JOYSTICKS because I logged it on Letterboxd a decade ago, but if you asked me what it was about other than “there’s an arcade and also boobs,” I would be completely at a loss.
I'm somehow more familiar with it despite never having watched it (it was covered on a We Hate Movies episode) and wanted to note that 1) it was director Greydon Clark and star Joe Don Baker's pre-Final Justice collaboration and 2) it has an entire theme song that is literally nothing but conflating arcade game terminology with sexual innuendo (e.g. 'Work the shaft! Shoot straight! Tap the button!')
somehow I didn't actually watch Porky's until the 90s, even though (like you, Keith) I had heard so much about it through other people when it was big in the 80s. My first reaction to it wasn't even that it was bad, but that I could not for the life of me understand how this had become an enormous cultural landmark.
"Where American Graffiti and Dazed and Confused made stars of its young cast members, Porky’s seemingly had the opposite effect for most of its stars."
Elder Millennial here - the American Pie generation. By the time I was the right age for it, Porky's was seen as a relic of a very specific, disgusting time. It never occurred to my friends or me to watch it in our teen years. (A complicating factor is my Canadian inferiority complex---finding out that Clark wasn't actually Canadian, as I assumed, actually makes me more interested in his movies.)
Going to come here and say basically this, too young to see it on release, not interested at all by the time I was old enough, EVEN with the promise of copious nudity.
Never seen Porky’s; I was much too young when it came out. But if you want to keep thinking it was a “relic” in the late 90s, I urge you not to revisit too many teen comedies from that time. Dude Where’s My Car comes to mind as particularly offensive.
Oh, I'm sure no teen comedy has ever aged well. My issue with Porky's circa 1999 wasn't even some kind of politically correct "this seems offensive" thing - it just seemed irrelevant. (Something like JUNO is as old now as Porky's was then, which is crazy.)
I was 10 when it came out, so I consumed it first via osmosis, then cable.
Can we talk about how Susan Clark (Cherry Forever) went on to play the mom ("Ma'am") on WEBSTER? Because that's knocking out two-thirds of the "babe / district attorney / Miss Daisy" trifecta rather boldly, and the only reason she never reached the last part is that she largely seems to have retired after that much time acting with her husband and young Mr. Lewis.
Good piece on a weird movie. I was 12 when it came out and probably saw it within a year, and I remember the strange feeling of being confronted with humor that seemed like I should have enjoyed but didn't, at all (unlike, say, Stripes). The vast majority of the cheap knockoffs were actually much funnier—Beach Balls, say.
I've never seen that one! I kind of treasure the ones set in the '80s for their time capsule quality. JOYSTICKS may be (OK, is) a lousy movie but those arcade games!
I had planned to go my whole life without ever seeing this (born 1980, so too young for the initial run), but I ended up watching it last year. Somewhere between a rewatch of "Black Christmas" and the Unspooled episode on "A Christmas Story", I learned that it was a Bob Clark movie.
I always assumed it was just a cruder version of Animal House (I think I may have seen a piece of the shower-peeping scene, long ago, likely on TV, so edited), so I was surprised to learn it was a high school movie, which I think takes a lot of the edge off. Teenage boys are really stupid!
Anyway, my expectations set low, I found it surprisingly watchable. The nudity is pretty equitable (this may be an artifact of Amazon Prime having the open-matte version). The only sex scene is between adults (Kim Cattrall!!). The boys are usually the victims of their own ignorance about sex while the girls, while obviously not the focus, come across as witty and mature.
And I swear, Nancy Parsons turns in a Margaret Dumont caliber performance of playing straight while everyone around her is being extremely silly, especially in the "penis lineup" scene.
I have never seen this movie, and I never will, as I have no doubt aged out of any possible enjoyment decades ago. But I must say this: either this movie or Porky's II was the Holy Grail of raunchiness (I can't remember as it was so long ago). Because I never saw it but heard of it incessantly, in my mind I had placed it on the highest of pedestals.
Thank you as always to The Reveal for sitting through the not-so-great ones like this, on our behalf...
I did see this while in high school in a packed movie theater and it PLAYED. I remember the scene mentioned about the the gym coach wanting to investigate the teen perpetrators while the men all crack up and it did have the audience convulsing, so you are right that the film is experienced differently in a theater vs video. Now it is kind of shameful that I found it so funny and I have not watched it since, but we all need to reckon with our histories. And I will add Porky's 2 is an even weirder film that tackles the KKK and ends with a herd of naked middle aged men, which is probably not what the core audience was looking for in a sequel.
I was pleasantly surprised when I finally watched Porky's as an adult. I found it to be a surprisingly mature, perceptive, and funny look at the experiences of teenage males. Which makes it an unlikely companion piece to the director’s later A Christmas Story. Baby Geniuses, on the other hand, wins my prize for worst film ever made - no exaggeration. It's painful to watch.
So I saw this as a teen in the early ‘80’s. We had rented a VCR for the weekend (this was when they’re still pretty new), along with 10 movies. Porky’s was one, which would have been more exciting if I hadn’t had to watch it with my parents*. I recall my dad thinking it was pretty great. One of the movies I chose randomly, Repo Man, cleared the room but left a strong impression on me.
*that wasn’t the most mortifying film I watched with them (and my younger sister), which was definitely Fast Times at Ridgmont High 😳💀💀
Porky's was the first movie my wife and I watched together, when we met in college. Twenty years later it remains the worst movie we've watched together.
I know I’ve seen JOYSTICKS because I logged it on Letterboxd a decade ago, but if you asked me what it was about other than “there’s an arcade and also boobs,” I would be completely at a loss.
I'm somehow more familiar with it despite never having watched it (it was covered on a We Hate Movies episode) and wanted to note that 1) it was director Greydon Clark and star Joe Don Baker's pre-Final Justice collaboration and 2) it has an entire theme song that is literally nothing but conflating arcade game terminology with sexual innuendo (e.g. 'Work the shaft! Shoot straight! Tap the button!')
Ran back to the episode in question to hear the song clip, and it's somehow even less subtle than I remembered:
Wiggle left!
Jerk it right!
Sockin' everything in sight!
Shoot fast!
Shoot straight!
Video to the MAAAAAAX!
A few years later they could dropped a killer Konami Code reference in there. Alas.
somehow I didn't actually watch Porky's until the 90s, even though (like you, Keith) I had heard so much about it through other people when it was big in the 80s. My first reaction to it wasn't even that it was bad, but that I could not for the life of me understand how this had become an enormous cultural landmark.
"Where American Graffiti and Dazed and Confused made stars of its young cast members, Porky’s seemingly had the opposite effect for most of its stars."
a thesis in the making!
When you're looking for an exciting young actor to cast, your first thought is not going to be 'that kid who got his crank grabbed through a peephole'
Elder Millennial here - the American Pie generation. By the time I was the right age for it, Porky's was seen as a relic of a very specific, disgusting time. It never occurred to my friends or me to watch it in our teen years. (A complicating factor is my Canadian inferiority complex---finding out that Clark wasn't actually Canadian, as I assumed, actually makes me more interested in his movies.)
He was Canadian by tax incentive.
Going to come here and say basically this, too young to see it on release, not interested at all by the time I was old enough, EVEN with the promise of copious nudity.
Never seen Porky’s; I was much too young when it came out. But if you want to keep thinking it was a “relic” in the late 90s, I urge you not to revisit too many teen comedies from that time. Dude Where’s My Car comes to mind as particularly offensive.
Oh, I'm sure no teen comedy has ever aged well. My issue with Porky's circa 1999 wasn't even some kind of politically correct "this seems offensive" thing - it just seemed irrelevant. (Something like JUNO is as old now as Porky's was then, which is crazy.)
I was 10 when it came out, so I consumed it first via osmosis, then cable.
Can we talk about how Susan Clark (Cherry Forever) went on to play the mom ("Ma'am") on WEBSTER? Because that's knocking out two-thirds of the "babe / district attorney / Miss Daisy" trifecta rather boldly, and the only reason she never reached the last part is that she largely seems to have retired after that much time acting with her husband and young Mr. Lewis.
Good piece on a weird movie. I was 12 when it came out and probably saw it within a year, and I remember the strange feeling of being confronted with humor that seemed like I should have enjoyed but didn't, at all (unlike, say, Stripes). The vast majority of the cheap knockoffs were actually much funnier—Beach Balls, say.
I've never seen that one! I kind of treasure the ones set in the '80s for their time capsule quality. JOYSTICKS may be (OK, is) a lousy movie but those arcade games!
I have not seen Porky's, but I have seen Baby Geniuses, which my parents took us to when it came out (it was awful, probably worse than Porky's)
I had planned to go my whole life without ever seeing this (born 1980, so too young for the initial run), but I ended up watching it last year. Somewhere between a rewatch of "Black Christmas" and the Unspooled episode on "A Christmas Story", I learned that it was a Bob Clark movie.
I always assumed it was just a cruder version of Animal House (I think I may have seen a piece of the shower-peeping scene, long ago, likely on TV, so edited), so I was surprised to learn it was a high school movie, which I think takes a lot of the edge off. Teenage boys are really stupid!
Anyway, my expectations set low, I found it surprisingly watchable. The nudity is pretty equitable (this may be an artifact of Amazon Prime having the open-matte version). The only sex scene is between adults (Kim Cattrall!!). The boys are usually the victims of their own ignorance about sex while the girls, while obviously not the focus, come across as witty and mature.
And I swear, Nancy Parsons turns in a Margaret Dumont caliber performance of playing straight while everyone around her is being extremely silly, especially in the "penis lineup" scene.
I have never seen this movie, and I never will, as I have no doubt aged out of any possible enjoyment decades ago. But I must say this: either this movie or Porky's II was the Holy Grail of raunchiness (I can't remember as it was so long ago). Because I never saw it but heard of it incessantly, in my mind I had placed it on the highest of pedestals.
Thank you as always to The Reveal for sitting through the not-so-great ones like this, on our behalf...
I did see this while in high school in a packed movie theater and it PLAYED. I remember the scene mentioned about the the gym coach wanting to investigate the teen perpetrators while the men all crack up and it did have the audience convulsing, so you are right that the film is experienced differently in a theater vs video. Now it is kind of shameful that I found it so funny and I have not watched it since, but we all need to reckon with our histories. And I will add Porky's 2 is an even weirder film that tackles the KKK and ends with a herd of naked middle aged men, which is probably not what the core audience was looking for in a sequel.
I was pleasantly surprised when I finally watched Porky's as an adult. I found it to be a surprisingly mature, perceptive, and funny look at the experiences of teenage males. Which makes it an unlikely companion piece to the director’s later A Christmas Story. Baby Geniuses, on the other hand, wins my prize for worst film ever made - no exaggeration. It's painful to watch.
So I saw this as a teen in the early ‘80’s. We had rented a VCR for the weekend (this was when they’re still pretty new), along with 10 movies. Porky’s was one, which would have been more exciting if I hadn’t had to watch it with my parents*. I recall my dad thinking it was pretty great. One of the movies I chose randomly, Repo Man, cleared the room but left a strong impression on me.
*that wasn’t the most mortifying film I watched with them (and my younger sister), which was definitely Fast Times at Ridgmont High 😳💀💀