Below The Bible Belt: Does Horror Sex-Comedy ‘Porno’ Rise to The Occasion?
The year is 1992. Madonna’s A League of Their Own and Brendan Fraser’s Encino Man dominate movie theatres across America. Hardcore is the reigning sub-cultural soundtrack. There are cinemas run and staffed by fundamentalist Christians, and a wonderfully Danny Elfman-inspired score punctuates your every movement and decision.
At least that is the picture painted by Porno, a gory horror-comedy presented by Fangoria, in which a depraved succubus (Katelyn Pearce) preys on a gang of horny-for-Christ (and each other) teens in their local movie theatre.
Porno is set entirely in the movie theatre of an extremely Christian town, a stark juxtaposition for a film that debuted its red band trailer on Pornhub. Although, therein lies the first problem; Porno is surprisingly tame on the sex front. This usually would not be an issue for a raunchy sex comedy – the way that sex is portrayed in mainstream cinema can set a low expectation. However, after promising so much in its promo run, the occasional flaccid penis and naked lady doesn’t really cut it anymore.
After a day of solid business, Mr. Pike allows his staff to stay behind after shift and hold their own staff screening of whatever film they want – although the family-friendly A League of Their Own and Encino Man are the only options. At least, they were the only options until a secret basement with ominous, glowing reels is discovered. One of these reels houses the lust-hungry succubus Lilith. Of course, this is the film they choose to watch, much to the dismay of projectionist and straight-edge, hardcore enthusiast ‘heavy metal Jeff’ (Robbie Tann). Tann is another scene-stealer, with consistently great dialogue and an expert portrayal of a holier-than-thou straight-edge hardcore kid that any punk fan will immediately recognise.
The gang of puritanical teens is your typical teen comedy Breakfast Club collective – a character for every archetype, led by a Principal Vernon figure in the form of Mr. Pike (Bill Phillips). Mr. Pike runs the cinema, leads the prayer circles and leaves the kids in charge to kick-start the story. He also completely steals his limited screen time by playing the Christian cult leader schtick completely straight to great comic effect. The god-loving, frustrated fundamentalist angle is played throughout the film by every character to varying degrees of success. It is an easy enough piece of juxtaposition to utilise in a film like this, but it’s quite a one-note joke and does start wearing thin as the film rolls on.
After watching the cursed film, which unleashes Lilith, there is hell to pay and the main plot of the film gets going. Although Porno’s plot is simply ‘naked succubus explodes penises’, there is a lot of fun to be had getting from one genital explosion to the next.
For a film with such a tongue-in-cheek premise, it doesn’t lack visual flair. The sequences of film reel footage that we see are immersive and really help set the tone, like the bizarre lovechild of George Méliès and Anton Lavey.
Each character has their own bit of backstory: Ricky (Glenn Stott) is gay and has just got back from conversion camp, but Chaz (Jillian Mueller) has a crush on him. Everyone thinks Todd (Larry Saberstein) is a peeping Tom, and pious Mr. Pike is not a pure as everyone thought. While there is nothing wrong with providing backstory and character development, systematically resolving each character’s storyline does mean that Porno has even more balls in the air than it has balls on screen, and it does slightly take its toll on the pacing, leading to a classic second-act sag.
As you would come to expect from anything presented by Fangoria, the gore is gratuitous and extremely effective. Mainstream cinema might not be ready for grossly graphic portrayals of sex, but it has absolutely no issue showing us genital-based gore in excruciating detail. You may never see anyone have sex, but if a full-frontal shot of a blown open scrotum is more your bag, then you will be in luck.
Porno is more comedy than horror, but that doesn’t mean that it is yet another low-rent parody film. In fact, it is a great example of pastiche over parody, lovingly slipping horror tropes into a raunchy comedy. While it may have a few pacing issues and doesn’t always deliver on its own hype, Porno is nonetheless a fun romp that will take you right back to the ’90s.