Tag Archives: Nancy Parsons

Porky’s Revenge (1985)

Posted on December 10, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rescue from shotgun wedding.

Porky (Chuck Mitchell) has rebuilt his casino that was destroyed by the teens in the first film by turning it into a riverboat. To help pay for this he extorts Coach Goodenough (Bill Hindman) for money and other such favors since he owes him on a gambling debt. Pee Wee (Dan Monahan) and his friends try to come to their coach’s rescue by sneaking onto the boat and taking pictures of the illegal gambling activity, which they hope to show to the district attorney. Porky though catches them in the act and threatens revenge, so to get out of their jam they agree to throw their next basketball game, so that Porky can bet against them and win a lot of money. Meanwhile Meat (Tony Ganios) is having problems of his own when he gets ‘forced’ into having sex with Porky’s daughter Blossom (Wendy Feign) causing Porky to insist that the two now must get married.

While fans of the franchise traditionally rate this at the weakest of the three films I found it to be a step up and even, at least at the beginning, to be moderately amusing particularly the pool scene where the cheerleaders concoct a scheme to get the boys to take off their bathing suits and prance around in front of the parents naked. The script was written by Ziggy Steinberg, whose career is the perfect encapsulation of Hollywood, where if you’re considered ‘up and coming’ you can find plenty of work, but the second your material is perceived as getting stale you can quickly become a leper and no offers to be found. This though came at a point where he was still a sought-after commodity, and I felt the script was better structured and seemed much more like a sequel continuing the elements from the first one versus going off on wild tangents like the second one did.

It helps having Chuck Mitchell back as the title character. It’s not like his acting is all that great, but his big presence and gruff, unfiltered delivery keep it fun and he offers a bona fide nemesis for the kids to go after. The casino boat is impressive, and the majority of the film’s $8 million budget was used just to build it. Seeing it get destroyed, which comes near the end, is exciting too and probably more memorable than the destruction of Porky’s original backwoods casino.

The characters though lack growth. Pee Wee for example is still obsessed about getting laid even though he had already lost his virginity in the first film, so his personality needed to evolve into something else. He should, especially being a senior, be the confident one who now takes some insecure freshman under his guidance to show him how it’s done instead of acting as a perpetually immature junior high kid, which by this point is no longer even remotely interesting.

The pranks continue to go overboard and boarder on cruelty. The one that gets played on Beulah Balbricker (Nancy Parsons) is especially stupid. She is set up to believe that she’s going to have a rendezvous with her long-lost boyfriend Snooky (Sandy Meilke), so she goes to a hotel room lying in bed in her nightie waiting for him to enter, so that they can return to their ‘passionate ways’ of the past. In reality though it would never work that way. These two had not seen, or corresponded with each other in many years, so there was no guarantee that both would still have the same feelings for the other. Since so much time had passed they were by this point theoretically strangers, so to avoid embarrassment and possible rejection they would instead get together at a restaurant, or over drinks in order to ‘catch up’ with things and then if they still both felt the same spark they might check into a hotel room, but nobody would just do that right off the bat.

I did though like the way her character changes, she’s the only one that does, by having her behaving like a completely different person once she’s finally able to get together with the real Snooky. However, I feel it would’ve made more sense had she been portrayed as someone who had never had sex versus one that just hadn’t had it in a while. Having her being lifelong frigid would’ve explained better why she was so hyper obsessed with suppressing everyone else’s sexuality. A better payoff would’ve had her really have sex with Tommy (Wyatt Knight) and found much to her surprise to liking it and this would then inspire her evolution.

Spoiler Alert!

The prank involving the bridge operator (Mal Jones) gets botched as well. It hinges on him believing that Wendy (Kaki Hunter) and Tommy are jumping off it to commit suicide, which distracts him enough so that he leaves to bridge operator room and allows Pee Wee to go in and close the bridge and thus destroy Porky’s boat that is trying to go underneath it. However, the bridge isn’t high enough from the water to be that dangerous. In fact, if it was truly that dangerous then both Tommy and Wendy would’ve died when they jumped off of it, but they don’t so the operator would never have been fooled. If anything, he would’ve thought they were just a couple of teens going out for a late-night skinny dip and wouldn’t have panicked at all.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 22, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes

Rated R

Director: James Komack

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Basketball Movies, Crude Comedy, Movies that take place in Florida, Movies with Nudity, Sequels

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Porky’s II: The Next Day (1983)

Posted on December 7, 2025 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Banning a Shakespeare play.

Now that Pee Wee (Dan Monahan) has lost his virginity to Wendy (Kaki Hunter) they decide that their next project will be putting on a production of ‘Romeo & Juliet’ at their high school, which will be directed by Mrs. Morris (Ilse Earl) Pee Wee’s mother. Problems though ensue when John Henry (Joseph Runningfox), a Seminole Indian, gets cast in the lead where he will then kiss Wendy, a white woman, on stage, which gets the local Klux Klan upset and they proceed to ambush things, so it won’t be able to proceed. There’s also outcry from a local Reverend named Bubba Flavel (Bill Wiley) as he and his religious constituents feel that the play is ‘obscene’ and therefore must be shut down in the name of ‘decency’. The teen cast then visits the office of County Commissioner Bob Gebhardt (Edward Winter) hoping he can use his influence to help keep the play going and while he initially promises them that he will, he eventually renegades. This angers the kids, and they devise an elaborate revenge on not only him, but the Klan and Reverend Flavel.

It’s quite clear that writer/director Bob Clark, who was working on Christmas Story while helming this one, had no idea that the first installment was going to be as big of a success as it was and there had clearly been no plans for a sequel. When the studio came begging for one, he felt obliged and spent 6 months, with the help of two other screenwriters, to come up with something. The result though is a movie in desperate search for a story with a script that’s a mishmash of over-the-top nonsense. What made the first one so good was that as crude as it was it still showed teens as they were with dialogue and situations that rang true, but here all of that gets thrown out with everything played up in an extreme way simply for the sake of a cheap laugh.

The most annoying aspect are the one-dimensional characters particularly the Reverend who is a cartoonish caricature in a silly send-up of a southern preacher. The same goes with the City Commissioner that is well played by Winter, which helps keep it remotely entertaining, but portraying a politician as being sleazy and two-timing is quite cliched and redundant. The return of Beulah Ballbricker, played by Nancy Parsons, is problematic as well. In the first film she was very strict with the rules, but here she’s turned into a religious fanatic, which seems like two different people. The scene where she sits on a toilet and begins singing loudly is dumb. Sure, people may talk on the phone while taking a dump, or read a magazine, or even browse the internet, but bellowing out a loud rendition of ‘That Old Black Magic’ while in a public stall is not one of them making her beyond ‘goofy’ and more into someone who should be institutionalized.

The pranks come off as unnecessarily cruel especially the scene in a graveyard where Pee Wee is made to believe that he accidentally killed a prostitute while having sex with her, which could be quite traumatic for someone and yet his ‘friends’ act like it’s ‘all in fun’. What’s worse is that Pee Wee never brings it up afterwards apparently having no qualms whether a sex worker dies at his hands or not just as long as he’s not blamed, which unintentionally makes him cold and uncaring.

The climactic bit where Wendy dresses up as a big bosomed 17-year-old prostitute who makes a major scene at a posh restaurant in an effort to embarrass the commissioner gets overdone too. For one thing it’s seems awfully extreme to put so much effort to get revenge on what’s nothing more than a tacky high school play with cheap props that isn’t going to make any money and cast members who weren’t all that excited about being in it, so why get so upset if it gets canceled? It also begs the question why these kids are so sure they can get away with their hijinks and not suffer any consequences. The ‘prank’ that gets done inside the restaurant causes a lot of damage and since these teens live in the same community as the adults they would most assuredly get recognized by someone and be either arrested for causing a disturbance and handed a very hefty bill for the repairs, or their parents would, which for them would be just a bad.

The only small funny bit, and I kid you not, comes at the very end during the closing credits, when the head waiter at the now ravaged restaurant tries to save face by convincing the patrons that it had all been an ‘April Fool’s joke’, which got me to chuckle. It’s also kind of amusing how Pee Wee gets so aroused by pics in National Geographic, or sexually stimulated by strippers who aren’t even naked, but just scantily clad enough to excite him anyways, which in this porn saturated era probably wouldn’t be deemed all that titillating, so in that aspect it’s interesting, but everything else is a disaster. It doesn’t even have Porky. How can you have a film titled ‘Porky’s’ if that character never actually shows up though he does reappear in the third installment, which will be reviewed next.

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: June 24, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Bob Clark

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Crude Comedy, Movies that take place in Florida, Movies with Nudity, Sequels

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Porky’s (1981)

Posted on November 21, 2025 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Revenge on nightclub owner.

Pee Wee (Dan Monahan) is a teen living in the Florida everglades during the 1950’s who suffers from a small penis size, which has prevented him from losing his virginity. He and his high school pals have hatched a plan of pooling their money together and then hiring a prostitute, which they can then all have sex with. Their first attempt doesn’t work out, so they decide to go to a nightclub that sits in a lagoon on stilts and is called Porky’s, which is the nickname of the owner of the establishment, ‘Porky’ Wallace (Chuck Mitchell) that he attained for being overweight. The boys feel they’ll be able to hire one of the strippers at the club to have sex with and Porky agrees to ‘set it up’ and takes their money only to then have the teens fall through a trap door and into the water below. This enrages Mickey (Roger Wilson) who set-up the deal and he becomes consumed with getting revenge on Porky, but when he goes there to ‘settle things’ he gets badly beaten-up, which sends him to the hospital and convinces his friends that even sterner justice is needed in order to get the proper payback.

I remember when this movie came out and there were TV ads capturing people as they left the theaters and getting their first reaction. At the time this was considered ‘outrageous’ and many of the folks in the ad seemed either shocked or embarrassed. Nowadays though it’s unlikely most will consider it extreme, and some might even call it boring particularly in between the moments when it’s raunchy. The idea for it was conceived in 1972 by writer/director Bob Clark who based the story on his own experiences as a teen going to school in rural Florida during the 50’s. The studios though didn’t like the script, and it got shopped around for years before finally getting modest funding out of Canada where it could be used as a tax write-off and thus even though it was filmed in the U.S. by an American director it still gets labeled as one of the highest grossing films in Canadian movie history.

The critics like with the studio heads, didn’t care for it with both Siskel and Ebert naming it one of the worst movies to come out of the 80’s though when compared to the other teen sex comedies from that decade this one doesn’t seem all that bad. The characters have distinct personalities and much of the dialogue while raunchy seemed realistic for that age group and not all that different from what got talked about during my own high school days. The film also manages to tackle some serious topics like antisemitism, which was also a part of that era, so it has an adequate balance and doesn’t just stay hyper-focused on the sex.

On the negative end Nancy Parsons as the female coach version of Nurse Ratched is one-dimensional and Kim Catrall, playing a cheerleader nicknamed ‘Lassie’, plays too much of the bimbo caricature to be even remotely interesting. Neither is the fault of the actresses, who are okay, but more the writer. On the other hand, I loved the bit part of Susan Clark playing a prostitute. She had been in a few Disney movies just before this and later the TV-show ‘Webster’, so seeing her playing against the family image is fun.

I also loved Kaki Hunter who seems just as dirty minded as the guys and how she’s very average looking as I’ve found those types tended to be a little more ‘easy’, as evidenced by her doing it with Pee Wee, in order to get the guys’ attention and make up for not being as attractive versus in other teen flicks where it’s only the super-hot ones that sleep around. In that vein too I enjoyed the fact that during the shower scene when the boys are peeping at the girls there’s an overweight one impacting Pee Wee’s ability to see the thin ones, which is realistic too as in most high schools there’s a mix of body types and not all skinny like most other teen comedies would make you believe.

I did have some problems though with the nicknames mainly with Pee Wee and ‘Meat’ the name for Tony Ganios’ role. Supposedly this is for their penis size, but how would anyone know what their penises looked like? Normally one gets nicknames for physically attributes that everyone can see for instance if they’re a short height they could be called ‘shorty’. Yes, there is a scene where all the boys strip naked together, but their nicknames had already come about long before then. One could argue that maybe it started while they took showers after gym class, but in my high school if some guy was caught looking at another’s genitals, they’d be accused of being ‘gay’, which during that time period would be considered a stigma.

While the plot is lean and there are a few lulls there are enough comical moments to keep it afloat. The segment dealing with Nancy Parsons character going to the principal to ‘report’ seeing a penis in the girl’s shower and advocating for all the boys to undress so she could spot which one had a dick with a mole on it, is a gem especially with the way the camera zooms in on a hanging portrait of a smiling Dwight Eisenhower like even he too is in on the humor. The demolishing of Porky’s bar, which comes near the end, isn’t bad either and helps to make this thing a minor cult classic.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: November 13, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Bob Clark

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Crude Comedy, Movies that take place in Florida, Movies with Nudity

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Motel Hell (1980)

Posted on October 23, 2017 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Farmer Vincent’s tasty fritters.

Vincent (Rory Calhoun) and his sister Ida (Nancy Parsons) run a motel out in the sticks, but their main income comes from Vincent’s delicious meat fritters that he sells to the community. No one knows that the meat is made from humans who he gets by setting traps on a nearby road that sends the vehicles of unsuspecting motorists careening out of control. Once the cars have crashed Vincent removes their bodies from the wreckage and plants them in his hidden garden while also severing their vocal chords, so they cannot yell for help. Then once they are ‘ripe’ he slices up their bodies and uses them for his product.

This is yet another rendition of Ed Gein, the Plainfield Wisconsin farmer who dug up dead bodies from a nearby graveyard and used them for all sorts of sick purposes. While there have been many other films on the topic this one nicely steps back from the shock angle and instead injects dark humor that manages to make the story both funny and involving.

The original script, which was co-written by two brothers, was darker and intended for Tobe Hooper to direct, but when he pulled out of the project and Kevin Connor was hired he insisted that all of the ‘crudeness’ be excised. The result is an agreeably quirky take on the Gein legend that lacks scares, but makes up for with style and atmosphere. I particularly enjoyed the bird’s eye view of Vincent’s and Ida’s backyard lake as well as the surreal-like hum of the sunlamps that Vincent shines on his human victims at night.

Aging cowboy star Calhoun does quite well and out of all the actors who’ve attempted to play Gein it’s Calhoun that actually comes closest to the way he really looked and spoke. The only problem was that he was clearly much older than both Parsons and Paul Linke who play his siblings and no explanation for why the parents would have kids so far apart, or even if that would be possible as in reality Calhoun was 20 years older than Parsons and 26 years older than Linke.

The climatic chainsaw duel, which was thought up at the last minute and took 5 12-hour days to film, is fun. The kinky couple (Elaine Joyce, Dick Curtis) who visit the motel under the mistaken impression it’s a hotbed for swingers and allow themselves to get tied-up thinking it’s all a part of a sex game are funny too in a film that manages to be quirky without ever getting too campy.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: October 24, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 44 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Kevin Connor

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Horror, Movies with a Hotel setting, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity

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Homer and Eddie (1989)

Posted on December 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

homer and eddie

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Losers go road-trippin’

Homer (James Belushi) is a mentally challenged man suffering brain damage from being hit in the head by a baseball when he was a kid. He decides to go on a road trip to visit his sick father, but along the way he gets robbed and has to sleep in an abandoned car. It is there that he meets Eddie (Whoopi Goldberg) an embittered, volatile women who is supposedly suffering from a brain tumor. The two trek off in her car to Oregon to meet up with Homer’s parents and also try to track down the men who robbed him.

I was impressed with the acting range shown here by Goldberg. Usually she is so likable, but here she is quite edgy and does it in an effective way. I applaud her attempts to work outside of her comfort zone although her fits of anger make the viewer uncomfortable and her crying does not sound authentic.

Belushi is good in atypical role and for the most part he is the best thing about the movie. His lines are consistently amusing, but the film walks an uncomfortable line between making him a sympathetic character to also making fun of him. Despite the fact that these two already worked together in Jumpin’ Jack Flash the chemistry between them doesn’t work.

The supporting cast is interesting in cameo roles. Casting 70-year-old 200 pound Ernestine McClendon as a prostitute gets points simply for its novelty, but seeing her in her grossly oversized panties is a bit much. Karen Black as her pimp has such a small, meaningless role that I was surprised that she even took it. Nancy Parsons has an interesting part as a cold and aloof woman who becomes sympathetic, which is a rarity for her. Director John Waters appears briefly as a robber and I kind of got a kick out of Don Hanmer as a very nervous cashier. Belushi’s real-life second wife Marjorie Bransfield can be spotted in the character of Betsy and this also marked the final film appearance for both Fritz Feld and Anne Ramsey.

The film features a wide-array of musical styles, which works against it. I liked Richie Havens rendition of ‘Home’, which had the nice laid-back beat and folk tinged sound that you expect for a road movie. Some of the more hard rock, heavy metal stuff became too loud and obnoxious and takes the viewer out of the picture instead of wrapping them in.

I liked the scenery and there are a few interesting moments, but trying to mix the surreal with the gritty is misguided. The comical bits get drowned out by the scenes of violence and a very maudlin theme. The result is an uneven film that pales in comparison to the classic road movies.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: December 1, 1989

Runtime: 1Hour 40Minutes

Rated R

Director: Andrei Konchalovskiy

Studio: Skouras Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Buddy Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Road Movies

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