Porkchop (2010) - 2/4

A large budget and good production values aren't really needed to make a fun film. Just a supple imagination. What's sad about Porkchop is that it begins so imaginatively and ends so banally. The first two thirds of Porkchop are almost a whole other film, a bizarre teenage sex comedy in which a stereotype nerd, a British punk, and a robot (voiced by Evil Dead II's Dan Hicks) all try to get some from a cheerleader and a post-punk lolita, while their more normal friend plays his girlfriend (Ruby Larocca) and the cheerleader.

This rogues gallery heads out for a camping trip, the journey to which makes up the comedy portion of the film. This part of the film is very good. While the acting and caricaturizations are all over-the-top, the characters are funny, the dialogue is witty--often so much so it's quite surprising--and delivered just as it should be. Knowing this film to be a horror film about a pig-headed killer, of course, meant I was in wait for the backwoods slasher action to greet the oddball characters. And that seemed very promising to me. Played as a horror comedy, so much could be done in the same absurd style that characterized most of the film. I imagined the epic battle that might ensue between pigman and robot, for instance, or the horrible death that might be leveled on the punk character.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The last third of the film uses next to nothing of the potential created in the previous two thirds. Once the killer, Porkchop, shows up, the film becomes a poor slasher. In a few minutes most of the characters are dispatched. The robot falls to pieces with one hit--which should be a lot funnier than it actually is. I hoped I'd never say this about any movie, but this could have used fewer pigmen. Or the characters should have put up some amusingly odd fight against the pigman. What does work in the last third of the film is the few bursts of comedy that interrupt the slasher action and the very few moments where horror and comedy really do mix.

While I can't give Porkchop a higher rating given its general weakness as the backwoods horror film it purports to be, I certainly applaud the imagination and absurd humour Eamon Hardiman and co-writer Zack Bassham invest in this film. It's like Revenge of the Nerds meets Don't Go In the Woods made on a $100 budget. Hopefully Hardiman will get better budgets and fulfill his obvious potential better than Porkchop did.