Porky's (Bob Clark, 1981)

It's finally come to this. I'm writing about Bob Clark's Porky's, the most successful Canadian movie of all-time. What's that? You didn't know Porky's was Canadian? Yeah, well, it is. Whenever you see Doug McGrath (Goin' Down the Road), Art Hindle (The Brood) and Kim Cattrall (Mannequin) in the same movie, chances are, it's Canadian. Anyway, I can't believe I'm about to review Porky's. It's not that the film is beneath me or anything like that. It's just that I've seen it so many times. Or have I? You see, Porky's is one of those films I've seen hundreds of times, but never from start to finish. What I think I'm trying to say is, I've gone out of my way more times than I care to admit to watch Coach Brackett fuck Miss Honeywell in the boys locker room. In other words, what happens before and after this scene has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Okay, maybe it's not a mystery, but I'm sure nothing that occurs before or after the sight of Kim Cattrall being boned on a pile of dirty gym socks can top it in terms of being iconic and junk. And trust me, it's iconic. Whenever Porky's would air on late night television back when I was a smallish person, I would stop everything I was doing the moment I saw Kim Cattrall in a gymnasium setting. Only problem being, there are, like, four separate scenes that feature Kim Cattrall in a gymnasium setting. Yeah, I said, four (there's a shitload of gym in this movie).

On top of there being four separate Kim Cattrall-related gym scenes, there's an intolerance subplot and a child abuse subplot. Though, to be fair, these two subplots are kind of related, as they both involve Tim (Cyril O'Reilly), a rampant anti-Semite with a dick for a dad. So, as you can see, there's a lot of stuff to wade through to get to my favourite scene.

(Given that you have now seen Porky's from start to finish for the first time, the big question is: Is the Coach Brackett and Miss Honeywell locker room sex scene still your favourite scene?) After giving it much thought, I've decided... What am I talking about? Of course it's still my favourite scene. Did I mention that Kim Cattrall is fucked on a pile of dirty gym socks? I did? Good. Did I mention that she wears a blue skirt that's the size of a dish towel? No? Well, she totally does... wear a blue skirt that can't be bigger than a dish towel.

The coolest thing about watching the entire film is that I got to see the build up to Coach Brackett and Miss Honeywell's locker room tryst.

It all starts in the gymnasium of Angel Beach High - located in the swampy wilds of Florida (it's 1954, by the way), when Coach Warren (Doug McGrath) implies to Coach Brackett (Boyd Gaines) that Miss Honeywell (Kim Cattrall) is a demon in the sack. No, actually, he implies that she's like Lassie, and that if you take her up the boy's locker room, she'll have sex with you. Either way, Coach Brackett is curious to learn more about Miss Honeywell and her Lassie-complex.

Even though Coach Warren tries his best inform his co-worker that he's about to be taken on the vaginal ride of his life, Coach Brackett still doesn't seem to fully-comprehend the magnitude of the sex fiend he currently has access to.

If only there was a way to get her up to the boy's locker room. It's no secret, but Coach Brackett finally does manage to get Miss Honeywell up there. And when he does, the whole school's going to find out why Miss Honeywell is called "Lassie." I'm guessing she's called that because her moans, or, I should say, her howls of pleasure, are canine-like in their application.

While the sight of Coach Brackett fruitlessly attempting to stifle Miss Honeywell's howling mouth hole as he plowed into her silky smooth vagina hole with his erect penis is the only sane reason anyone would watch this movie more than once. I have to say, Doug McGrath's equally fruitless attempt to stifle his laughter as he listened to Miss Honeywell howl is just important to the scene's success.

In fact, the film's two funniest scenes both involve Doug McGrath failing miserably when it came to stifling his laughter. The first one, like I've already mentioned, involves him trying not to laugh when he hears Kim Cattrall being screwed upstairs. And the second one has him unsuccessfully trying not to laugh as he listens to Miss Balbricker (Nancy Parsons) explain to the school's prudish principal that she wants put out an all-points bulletin for the teenage boy-penis she saw (and grabbed onto for a spell) in the girl's shower.

Convinced that the wayward adolescent cock belongs to Tommy (Wyatt Knight), Miss Balbricker wants the principal to allow her to stage a sort of penis lineup. As you might expect, Miss Balbricker's emphatic plea comes off as funny to the male coaching staff.

However, there's actually more to Miss Balbricker's grievance than simply a fugitive pecker. Ridiculed, fat shamed and sexually humiliated throughout the film by Tommy, Miss Balbricker sees the penis in the shower incident as her last chance to give Tommy his comeuppance through conventional channels. Of course, it being 1954, no comeuppance is forthcoming. And white male privilege continues unabated... for a little while longer.

Someone clearly benefiting from white male privilege is Dan Monahan's Pee Wee, a short basketball player with a small penis. Wait a minute, small penis?!? The opening scene shows Pee Wee waking up with quite the pup tent. Sure, he's not sporting John Holmes-quality morning wood, but it's not exactly tiny either. What gives?

Desperate to get laid, Pee Wee begs his friends to let him attend a gang-bang party they plan on holding in a shack in the woods. Only problem being, the whole thing is a ruse, as his friends have hired a large black man to play the hooker's machete-wielding husband.

Hold on, why am I writing about the Pee Wee subplot? Other than the "Mike Hunt" crank call he makes to Wendy (Kaki Hunter), this Pee Wee guy is a bit of a bore. Oh, and he calls "Blubber McNeil" a "lard ass" during the famous shower peepshow/glory-hole scene. Hey, Pee Wee. Just because "Blubber McNeil" doesn't fit into your narrow view of feminine beauty, doesn't give you to right to call people hurtful names. I know, I just got finished stating that white male privilege basically gives you that right, and she was blocking your view, but what you did was totally uncool.

After the shower peepshow scene, a traumatized Miss Balbricker tries to convince the school's principal to take disciplinary action against Tommy (he inadvertently taunts Miss Balbricker with his tallywacker through a hole in the shower wall). When this scenes ends, the credits should begin to role. But they don't. What we get instead is a thirty minute plus sequence where the gang, including Billy (Mark Herrier) and Meat (Tony Ganios), plot their revenge against Porky Wallace (Chuck Mitchell), the owner of a bar/brothel named... Porky's.

When the gang first show up at Porky's in the early part of the film to get laid, it ends badly. Dunked in water, the thoroughly degraded gang slink back to Angel Beach with their tails beneath their legs. Well, not Mickey (Roger Wilson), who apparently goes back repeatedly, only to get his ass beat. Now, I used the word "apparently," because we never actually see Mickey get his ass beat. The lack of visual evidence regarding Mickey's many trips to Porky's is the film's biggest flaw. I mean, I had completely forgotten about Porky by the time the revenge subplot gets underway. Meaning, the film's final third is pretty much a colossal waste of time.

In fact, the only bright spot of the "Porky's"subplot was the brief shot of the three ladies Pee Wee and the boys were supposed to have sex with had they not been deceived by Porky. The brunette on the right in the black hold-up stockings was my favourite, in case you were wondering.

Despite there only being four, maybe five genuinely funny moments in the entire film, I can see how Porky's managed to inflame the imaginations (and the genitals) of countless sex-starved teenage boys back in the day. Personally, I prefer to get my  old school juvenile kicks from films like, Private School (mmm, Betsy Russell). Or better yet, My Tutor, Beach Girls, or pretty much anything else teen-related released by Crown International Pictures.

The Wanderers (Philip Kaufman,1979)

A boisterous street gang flick masquerading as a rarely watched instructional video on how to coerce Italian, "colored," and Chinese thugs to work together to fight their Irish counterparts, The Wanderers is different from its cinematic cousin The Warriors, which was also released in 1979, in that it doesn't take place in a racially harmonious universe where comically attired gangs try to take over New York City after a robe-wearing idealist repeatedly asks a hastily gathered congregation if they can "dig it." No, this Philip Kaufman film, based on the novel by Richard Price, is set solely in the realm of reality. Following the small-time, yet sociologically relevant hijinks of The Wanderers, a gang of youths made-up of mostly teens from Italian extraction (fugetaboutit), the film tags along with four of the groups most headstrong members as they go about the daily routine. Which includes: race baiting fellow classmates (Racially Derisive Language 101 apparently makes up a large part of the their school's curriculum), molesting women on the sidewalk, fleeing from skinheads, recruiting burly new members, turning the tables on said skinheads by employing the inherent talents of said burly new members, cheating at strip poker (Mamma Mia! Toni Kalem* is one spicy meatball!), not fucking with The Wongs (the film's Chinese gang), and playing American football (a sport where you are, get this, given four downs to move the ball ten yards).

Now, I think the main reason I never saw this film on television growing up was probably because of its casual use of racial slurs and glamorization of outdoor melees. Either way, it's a shame it hasn't built up the same kind of cult following like The Warriors has enjoyed over the years. I mean, the unblinking nature of the racial tension in the history class scene (they don't saturate their language with a masking layer of sugar), the excessive brutality of the football field brawl (the musclebound father of one of the Wanderers uses a Ducky Boy gang member as a club), the romantic tug-of-war over a beatnik cutie (Karen Allen), and comradery between the guys in the gold jackets is all pretty compelling stuff.

Sure, the utilization of the JFK assassination and Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" to point out the coming cultural reposition was a tad heavy-handed, and the shot of all various races putting aside their nonexistent differences to combat a mob of height challenged Irishman seemed a little far-fetched. But everything else was teeming with unwholesome and nostalgic goodness.

I'll admit, the prospect of connecting with the trials and tribulations of hooligans living in The Bronx during the autumn of 1963 appeared to be a long-shot, especially since I'm not a big fan of the era (actually, I'm more indifferent to it than anything else). However, the sight of three Wanderers: Ken Wahl, John Friedrich, and Alan Rosenberg (not an Italian name in the lot) being chased by an angry mob of skinheads was like staring directly into a mirror.

You see, I distinctly remember fleeing from hairless punks on several occasions as a pointy-shoe attired delinquent. Whether or not these purposely bald asswipes wanted to inflict any real bodily harm on me and my equally pointy-shoe attired brothers was never quite established. (We never stood around to find out.) Anyway, the chase sequence involving the Wanderers and the Fordham Baldies brought back a lot of bittersweet memories. Which is something I didn't expect in a film about a bunch of gumbas acting overly tough in an urban setting.

Since I've already mentioned Karen Allen's cuteness, alluded to Toni Kalem's hotness (her looks of jealousy while smacking her chewing gum were awesome), and made an offhand remark about the lack of Italian surnames amongst the male leads, I'd like to finish by lavishing some mild acting praise on the bizarre duo that was Erland van Lidth de Jeude (The Running Man) and Linda Manz (Gummo) made as Terror (the leader of the Baldies) and Peewee (the Baldies lone female member). The combination of Erland's unexpected eloquence and Manz' overall scrappiness was intoxicating. It's true, their scenes together had a real oddness about them (their make out scene in particular). But out of all the great shots in The Wanderers, nothing quite beats the image of Terror and Peewee staring down a lumbering Wanderer named Perry (Tony Ganios) in that dark alleyway.

Oh, and I couldn't have been the only one who thought it was ironic that The Fordham Baldies were the only gang in the film who didn't seem to discriminate when it came to race.

* Toni Kalem looked absolutely scrumptious in her retro lingerie.

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