Sex & Violence Movie Review Part 1 - Porno

Chekov’s Gun. It’s a principle in drama, both on stage and on screen, that if you allude to something in the first act, you need to have it pay off in the third. Strictly speaking in Anton Chekov’s case, if a gun is introduced in the first act, it has to have been fired by the third…hence the name.

I have to admit, Porno has the most unexpected ‘Chekov’s Gun’ moment in cinematic history…that I know of.

Yes Drive-In Mutants, this one has it all, the three B’s (blood, breasts and beasts for you neophytes out there) writ large…which, really, isn’t all that surprising, given that the damn film is actually called Porno. Given the title, you’re likely not going to find this one in brick and mortar shops (or maybe, I mean, Target’s getting pretty progressive these days, if you know what I mean and I think you do), so is it worth tracking it down on Amazon? Let’s take a look at that synopsis and find out.

In a small Christian town, the local movie theater is closing up for the night…or is it? An old, crazy vagrant is running amok in the theater and happens to open a doorway to a hidden theater that this current one was built on top of: a dark theater of vice and perversion. This is only one of many secrets that are unveiled this night, as a succubus hunts down each one of the young employees, the creature unleashed through a strange, sealed film reel. Can these teens survive the night or will they succumb to their temptations and unleash the full dark power of this creature?

Porno opens about how you’d expect it to, with two people having some pretty loud sex. Of course, these two lovebirds aren’t our focus, instead, we pan out to see that this couple is being spied on by a pair of peeping toms. Abe and Todd are on their way to their job at the local theater and they prove to be our entry point into the story.

Getting to the theater, we meet the rest of our characters: Ricky who has been recently rehired after at stint at camp, Chastity (of course there’s a Chastity in a movie called Porno!) the assistant manager, the projectionist Heavy Metal Jeff and the owner/manager, Mr. Pike. The day starts off with a prayer circle that effectively gives us all the backdrop we need: everyone’s surface backstory, everyone’s role and a display of their strong faith…almost to the point of exceeding naivete.

Right off the bat, this film needs to be lauded for how it handles this. Look, I’ll be brutally honest, as an atheist, encountering any of these people in real life would just utterly piss me off…and in the first couple of scenes, this lot was certainly pushing that boundary. At the same time though, both the script and the actors are extremely gifted at conveying the aforementioned naivete. This kids don’t know a world outside of their little town and still retain a very simple view on life. Except for Jeff. He’s been to a little bit of college before he came back home. We learn more about that later as temptations come into play.

Of course, what made me an atheist ultimately was the hypocrisy that one typically finds in the most outwardly pious Christians and very fortunately, the film doesn’t skimp on that either. As the film progresses, we see them go from a very simple worldview, where the tenets of Christianity are amplified to 11, to a very complicated one. The character arcs here are very much from the very parable of eating from the tree of knowledge. They start the film simple, innocent and well, downright silly at times.

Cue the hobo and the film. The very apple, if you will. Once the succubus enters the proceedings, we see our characters forced to mature. Not simply sexually, mind you, but each illusion is stripped away. We find out Mr. Pike’s dirty little secret. We learn what kind of camp Ricky spent the summer at. We learn why Jeff came back home. We learn more about Todd and Abe’s unequal friendship. And we see Chastity emerge as the leader her title indicates. As each of their preconceived notions is dispelled and the kids learn more and more about what’s really happening around them, we not only see their characters grow but, like any good horror movie, the stakes go up each time. By the time we reach the final set piece of the film, the effort to destroy or at least re-trap the succubus, while certainly cliché we do see each character wrestle with their biggest demon (literally and figuratively!) and no one comes out unscarred.

While the film does indulge in a handful of cliches, I was very glad to see that it managed to avoid others. Yes, the film does an excellent job of tearing down faith and Christian hypocrisy but at the same time avoids being nihilistic by illustrating the point that faith is fine, but you have to temper it with experience and the world around you. Quoting scripture chapter and verse while hiding your inner demons is only going to get you killed in the end. Additionally, when shown a cast of teens consisting of 4 men and one woman…and you’re in a horror movie, your instinct is to center your betting pool or drinking game around the “final girl”, and Porno manages to avoid that and honestly, I kind of didn’t mind.

That being said, while there’s plenty of blood in the film, I gotta say that the body count is pretty low here. One…maybe two? Three if you count the succubus. [C’mon, I’m not giving anything away there! – Ed.] That’s not to say that Porno doesn’t have unsettling imagery…holy shit. There’s one scene that is EXTREMELY uncomfortable for ANY man to sit through. I still wince thinking about it. Of course, this should tell you that the gore effects are pretty top notch, especially when we get WAAAAAAAY to personal with Jeff. Thankfully, most of the effects here are practical as well, helping to add to the reality of the situation.

The cast here is pretty solid, each one effectively conveying the complexity of their character and their transition from innocence to adulthood. I tended to gravitate toward Robbie Tan’s Jeff the most, not so much for what he has to endure, but just the way he plays the ‘cool’ Christian. The one that tries to identify with you “hey, man, I know what that’s like” and then takes that wild left to Christian-CrazyTown. That and what can I say, I usually identify with the sarcastic misanthrope of any group and that’s certainly the role he occupies in the group. His performance is a delicate balance of world-weariness and yet still so utterly naïve that, for lack of a better word, is kinda charming. Of course, I do have to call out the succubus herself, Lilith, played by Katelyn Pearce for her two enormous talents, as Mr. Briggs would say. While certainly not a subtle performance, she handles the oscillations between the extremes of seductively alluring and bestial savagery pretty well. And…you know…boobs. [Before we wrap, it is worth noting that there’s almost just as much penis in this film as boobs, so ladies, there’s stuff here for you too. – Ed.]

While Porno wasn’t what I was expecting, that of a pick ‘em off one by one before the final girl bests the baddie, and certainly got annoying at times in the beginning, it ends up being a pretty decent flick. You get invested in the characters and each of them have some pretty satisfying character arcs within the 99 minute run time. There was one digital effect that was a little hokey but for a low budget feature, you get one of those free of charge. There is something that holds this movie back from greatness though…maybe because it does seem to borrow a bit from Lamberto Bava’s film Demons, docking some points in the originality factor. Or the fact that given the subject matter and how the trailer was cut, I was expecting a more horror-comedy vibe as opposed to mostly horror with a few jokes and gags (some quite brutal!) thrown in. Still, Porno proves to be solidly entertaining and worth a Happy-Cat recommendation.