Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (May 15, 2007)
Some movies inspire memorable trilogies – and then there’s Porky’s. The 1982 teen sex comedy became a big hit despite its lack of cleverness or charm. It then led to two sequels. I thought 1983’s Porky’s II: The Next Day was a total dud, so I didn’t exactly look forward to my screening of 1985’s Porky’s Revenge, the final chapter in the series.
Here we find the guys as they approach high school graduation. They lead their basketball team to the state finals, but their coach (Bill Hindman) has troubles. He lost a bunch of bucks at Porky’s and can’t pay back his debt. Orchestrated by Brian (Scott Colomby), the guys go to Porky’s (Chuck Mitchell) new river-borne operation to get evidence against him, but they run into trouble. Porky catches them and plans to kill them until they offer a bargain: if he lets them live, they’ll throw the championship basketball game.
This doesn’t sit well with many of them, so Brian invents yet another scheme. The boys will win the game and expose Porky’s sliminess, thus making themselves unassailable heroes. The rest of the movie follows these events along with a mix of inevitable complications.
Revenge features one thing you didn’t find in Porky’s II: Porky. The first sequel brought back all of the original’s high school student characters and some school staff but introduced a whole new set of antagonists. These choices made absolutely no sense, as PII really had little to do with its predecessor. It felt like a teen comedy that could take place anywhere and didn’t need to be set in the Porky’s universe.
If nothing else, I have to give Revenge credit for the fact that it manages to reconnect with the original flick. Indeed, I will give this flick credit for nothing else, but at least it made sense as a Porky’s movie. PII manipulated the characters to fit the story, whereas here the story makes sense for the characters.
Not that one should overuse the word “story” in this context. As with the original film, Revenge stands more as a framework for cheap gags and less as a coherent tale. The “plot” exists in a loose manner at best. Those elements create a vague impetus for what we see, but in truth, the flick essentially offers a collection of comedic skits cobbled together without much connection. That’s a lot like the original film, as it provided a similarly general theme to tie up its bits.
Does this mean that folks who liked Porky’s will enjoy Revenge. Maybe – I can’t really say since I most definitely didn’t dig the original. That flick’s gags seemed lame and amateurish, and that trend continues here. Not a single one connects to create humor. If there’s a laugh to be found in this clunker, I couldn’t fine it.
Most of the teen characters from the original and its first sequel return for Revenge. We lose a couple of students – Mickey and Tim – but the others come along for the ride. Is that a good thing? I guess, as at least it maintains continuity with the other movies. I think the actors remain bland at best, though, as they continue to fail to present memorable personalities. And Tony Ganios really let himself go to pot. Whereas Meat looked buff and muscular in earlier efforts, he clearly hit the buffet line before he made Revenge; he looks more like Porky here.
Revenge also brings back the first flick’s main appeal: female nudity. PII showed very little skin of that variety but made the bizarre and unpleasant choice to expose many, many ugly naked men. While the nudity in Revenge doesn’t compete with the glorious full-frontal shower scene in the original, at least Playmate Kim Evenson and some others offer decent flesh.
Not that these occasionally displays are enough to redeem Porky’s Revenge. I couldn’t find anything about the flick to make it entertaining – or even coherent. This is a piece of product that never amuses, charms or even vaguely maintains the viewer’s interest.
Odd footnote: while virtually no one liked the movie, the Revenge soundtrack became a collectible audiophile CD. Released by Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs, for quite some time theirs was the only version in print. Who cares, you might ask. A lot of people since the album included interesting nuggets like an otherwise unreleased tune from George Harrison. The MSFL disc still rakes in pretty big bucks on eBay. Who’d have thunk a bomb like this would manage to bring in a song from a Beatle?
