Porky's: One Size Fits All Edition
Fox Home Entertainment

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Young Kim Catrall's "Lassie" climax. The Michael Hunt gag. The female gym teacher's ruthless penis-grab in the girls' shower. They're all seminal moments in 1981's genre-defining teen comedy Porky's, which took the American Graffiti coming-of-age story to a raunchier, goofier level. Pee Wee (Dan Monahan), Billy (Mark Herrier), Tommy (Wyatt Knight), Mickey (Roger Wilson), Tim (Cyril O'Reilly) and Meat (Tony Ganios) are 1950s high school kids obsessed with getting laid and losing their virginity, particularly Pee Wee, who's so horny he wears a rubber on a date. After they're ripped off by the owner of a strip club named Porky's, the guys come up with a revenge plan.

Best remembered for its raunchy take on horny high school hijinks, Porky's also acknowledges the era's casual racism and anti-Semiticism in the Fort Lauderdale area where director Bob Clark grew up, particularly via the character of Tim, who ignorantly slurs Jews as "kites." But Clark never gets preachy nor lets that reality get in the way of the comedy. The practical jokes pile up so fast in Porky's that it's easy to forget the boys' vendetta against the porcine strip club owner. The girls in the movie aren't just eye-candy, either; they dish it out as good as they get it, particularly the wise-cracking Wendy (Kaki Hunter). The voyeuristic thrills of the shower room peepholes (and its painful conclusion for Tommy) have aged surprisingly well after a quarter-century. A long sequence -- when fascistic gym teacher Beulah Balbricker recommends a police-style penis line-up so she can identify the tallywacker with the "incriminating mole" that she grabbed in the shower -- is hysterical, and more impressive when Clark notes that it's all one 4½-minute take. All in all, Porky's is the high school fun every guy wishes he had -- and that never gets old.

In the entertaining "Porky's Through the Peephole: Bob Clark Looks Back" featurette, the writer-director talks about the struggle he had to get the film made.

The infamous Porky's shower scene

The movie was canceled at one point by the studio, forcing Clark to spend his own money for a time to keep the production going until he convinced the studio to change its mind. Clark discusses the real-life genesis of some of the movie's most memorable scenes, including one when Honeywell (played by Sex and the City actress Kim Catrall) screams wildly during sex in the equipment room, while the whole gym class listens, living up to her nickname "Lassie"; the famous tallywacker in the shower scene; and the prank call for "Mike Hunt" at the diner where the kids hang out. In "Porky's: A Comedy Classic," comedians discuss the impact the movie had in the early 1980s and on their careers, as well as its nudity, the pubic hair styles of the day and Ms. Balbricker's infamous penis-pulling scene. Clark's running audio commentary is fascinating, as he talks about critics who vilified his movie (Siskel and Ebert despised it, according to Clark), as well as fan mail he got from playwrights Arthur Miller and David Mamet. Who knew Porky's had such prestigious fans?

by Sam Jemielity