94 minutes – Comedy
Language: English
Release date: March 19, 1982
DVD release date: November 2006
Canadian distributor: Astral Films
US distributor: 20th Century Fox

This raunchy teen comedy, a rehash of American Graffiti via National Lampoon’s Animal House, is about a group of frat boys in 1950s Florida trying to get laid. Porky’s made a ton of money (producer Harold Greenberg built the Astral Communications empire on the profits), spawned two sequels, and it has enshrined itself as the most reviled film in the Canadian canon. The reviews were so harsh (Variety called it ‘astonishingly vulgar … has to be seen to be believed’) and the worldwide box office so huge (exceeding $100 million) that no other Canadian film even comes close.* Porky’s has been dismissed as an aberration, a bad joke, but given the comic extremes of Dumb and Dumber and American Pie, the film’s juvenile, foul-mouthed humour seems more like a harbinger of things to come. – Essential Guide to Canadian Film

* The 2006 film Bon Cop Bad Cop replaced Porky’s as the highest grossing film in Canada. The 2010 film, Resident Evil: Afterlife replaced Porky’s as the highest grossing Canadian film at the worldwide box office.

Read our review of the Porky’s Special Collector’s Edition DVD.