the groundhog day project

I can relate to Amos and Theodore right now because sometimes plans go awry. I was supposed to be watching the original Star Wars today. But, 1) I don't own a copy of that film anymore, 2) it costs $17.99 to buy it on Amazon Prime (and apparently isn't available for rental), 3) I actually bought the original trilogy on video on eBay a few days ago hoping it would be here in time, so I didn't really want to spend money on it anyway (and that VHS trilogy did not arrive in time; let's hope it gets her tomorrow), but then this led to a dilemma earlier, 4) I had no movie to watch today. So, I was looking up--trying to keep things chronological--movies that also came out in 1975 or that came out in 1976 that fit the bill for this month, that is, I watched them a lot as a kid. There were some good movies in those years-- Carrie , Rocky , The Godfather Part II , Jaws , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , Taxi Driver , and two films I've actually watched for this blog be...

Hobgoblins is a good example for exploring why a bad movie is bad... Well, there can be many reasons, but this is a big one. Like the more (in)famous Troll 2 , Hobgoblins ' biggest mistake is not knowing what it wants to be... Or rather, failing entirely at being what it seems to want to be by not going far enough. Troll 2 , for example, leans toward serious sexual moments with Creedence but backs off before it goes too far. Instead, perhaps because it was made by Italians directing a bunch of Mormons, it aims at being quaint, being kid-friendly. Hobgoblins makes that same mistake. Phone sex worker magically shows up in person, but is there any sex? Nope. Amy secretly desires to be a stripper, apparently, but strips down to about the same amount of cloth you'd see in a Jane Fonda Workout take from this same decade. Sure, her lyrics are leaning toward explicit. Like that line about showing everyone she's not wearing any underwear, but then the hobgoblins turn everything t...

Let's be clear. Yesterday was full of contradictions. Watch bad movies. Don't watch bad movies. Associate only with those like you. Associate with those different from you. Or everything and anything in between. Just, whatever you do, try if you can to make the world better by doing it. Laugh at whatever makes you laugh. Laugh loudly. Cry at whatever makes you sad. Wail if you must. Rage at the politics (or movies) that disturb you. And lament for failure, in whatever form. Put some thought into what you do and do what makes you happy (barring anything that hurts anyone else). Rant and rave and contradict yourself. It's fun. But, enough about yesterday. Tonight I watched Howard the Duck . I'm not sure if I had watched the whole thing since I saw it in the theater in 1986, when I was 10. I'm sure I had seen parts of it now and then on cable. But, mostly, I had forgotten what supposedly made it so bad. The thing is, it's not that bad. In fact, for 1986, for a fa...

"Sportoes, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads--they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude." Don't we all? Even though he's a bit of a selfish jerk, his heart's in the right place. He--being Ferris Bueller. Class clown... perhaps; in the film we never see him in school, of course, and we'll ignore the follow-up TV series for now. "Righteous dude." And, maybe a bit of a pied piper out to inspire his fellow teens. Day 1 with a movie I've seen many times, I should have a lot to say, but I find myself just sitting here enjoying the show. I suppose what matters here is what Ferris Bueller's Day Off adds to the conversation I've gotten going with Porky's and Fast Times at Ridgemont High . The initial topic worth discussing is adults. In Porky's , the adults were either the enemy or just as bad as the teenagers--remember, Officer Jarvis and Coach Brackett join in the final conflict with...

So, right at the top, the Sherman Oaks Mall featured as the Ridgemont Mall is the same mall featured briefly in Commando . In other Groundhog Day Project news, a guy emailed me today for my help in identifying Sandy Maschmeyer (Laraine, aka the French Maid date) and Angela Paton (Florence "Mrs" Lancaster) from their high school yearbook photos. I kind of like being a guy people can ask about Groundhog Day related stuff. But anyway, Fast Times at Ridgemont High . Seven minutes in and we've already got two montage bits with songs playing over them. There's already talk of underage sex, brief nudity (albeit just in some locker photos), and a whole lot of coupling and mating-type displays going on. And, like Porky's , the main cast is older than their characters. They have to be, of course, because of some of the subject matter; it just makes production easier. It's been a while since I've watched this movie. And, I think I mentioned yesterday that I did ...

"Teenagers seem to occupy a time warp of eternally unchanging preoccupations" ( Ebert , 1981). I suppose we'll see this month. I'm finished with Porky's after tonight (and I so wanted to watch Porky's II: The Next Day and Porky's Revenge in my downtime this past week but I just didn't have time). Choosing four films to represent teenage, high school themes was difficult. Narrowing it down--like I did with action films--to the 1980s helped. On the one hand, that reduced my choices to about eight films (a much easier number to reduce further). On the other hand, it also stuck me back in my childhood in looking back at these films. I've got nostalgia for these movies, just as Porky's has nostalgia for the fifties. It's a simpler time, a more innocent time, when the world was ending and sex was on the big screen but I was constantly told how it was bad and I shouldn't even think about it. Now, I don't think that I actually saw the...

Despite its flaws--see any of the previous entries regarding the sexism and casual racism on display in the film-- Porky's is actually a pretty good example of film. Scenes that might seem superfluous at first blush (Brackett and Honeywell, perhaps; Tim and his father (assuming you discount my coded homosexuality theory), the "Princeton sucks" half of the Deadbeats scene) actually support the general themes fairly well. Plotwise, there are two threads of the same theme going on in this movie--the Angel Beach boys are trying to become men by getting laid and seeing girls naked and they like to play pranks on one another. The latter starts with the eggs, plays through the Cherry Forever sequence, the giant condom (for which Pee Wee gets revenge with the Mike Hunt phonecall), and which ultimately explodes quite fluidly into the destruction of Porky's. The former twists and turns through the interaction between Meat and the freshman girl, just about every appearance o...

For the record, I would have rather had more research and depth for yesterday 's entry. Given the short time frame I've got to research stuff for this blog, I just couldn't find a good source about queer coding in cinema. Found a few sources talking about how certain characters in, say, 1950s' films can be understood as gay even though their films could not really have them be, given the Hays Code. But, they just didn't get into details about what aspects of a character demonstrated coded homosexuality. Unfortunately, the topic proved more complicated than I had hoped. But, life--and this blog--goes on. The starting point today is a bit from Ebert's (1981) review of the film. He tells us that "the film doesn't like women [and so] its sex scenes all create fear and hostility." I got into this a bit the last two days , and I must at once both agree and disagree with Ebert's sentiment. On the one hand, I do not believe the hostility and fear t...

It's no wonder I grew up to be a bit strange, a little socially awkward, and rarely thinking too far into the future as far as planning my life. I grew up with popular culture telling me that World War III could happen any time and with my church and school concurring that, yes indeed, the world was ending soon. Meanwhile, I'm seeing movies like Porky's , all about the pursuit of sex, when I'm being told by my parents, by my teachers, by the ministers at church every week, that sex (premarital sex anyway) is a sin, and I'm basically a sinner for even thinking about it. But, first, a few things to think about when it comes to Porky's . Though the main cast spend most of the movie seeking out heterosexual sex, they never actually have any. Pee Wee is finally losing his virginity as the film ends, but none of the other main characters actually have sex. And, I pointed out yesterday that Tommy and Billy don't even have sex with Cherry Forever when it seems lik...

Bob Clark directed Black Christmas , Porky's and A Christmas Story . There is either something really wrong with that fact or something really awesome. On the one hand, those are three very different films. A horror film, a sex comedy and a nostalgic family picture. I don't think the odd man out here is A Christmas Story , though. I think it's Black Christmas . Black Christmas , whatever its faults--check this blog last December for details on that film and A Christmas Story --is a fairly straight forward film, played for realism (unlike the over-the-top remake). Porky's and A Christmas Story , on the other hand, are actually both quite nostalgic. The simpler time for A Christmas Story is 1939-40, before World War II really twisted the 20th century around, before the Cold War. The simpler time here in Porky's , on the other hand, is decade and a half later, World War II has come and gone, young men are fighting across the world in Korea now, but it's not t...

It's all about sex. And, why shouldn't it be. I mean, most of the characters in Porky's are teenagers. And, the film comes before, say, AIDS was a huge thing, and long before pornography was free on the internet. Of course, all of these teenage boys are out for sex. They're fucking teenagers, and, well, they want to be fucking teenagers. Open on a neon sign. Two pigs, male and female. GET IT . The lights change and the female turns her back to the male but her dress goes up to reveal her butt. The male pig has lost his hat. AT . And, Porky's is lit the whole time. And, right away, when nothing has even happened yet, we know this is a movie about sex. And, wow, I forgot that this movie was not set in the present but the 1950s. Our first real scene is Edward "Pee Wee" waking up with an erection. He proceeds to measure his penis and he's got a growth chart. This film really is not afraid of dealing with rather explicit material that older films w...