Keola Racela’s Porno is a raucous horror comedy that’s horny like the Devil (where my Todd & The Book Of Pure Evil fans at?). It’s never as sleazy or scummy as the blatant titling suggests, but, in the same breath, lives up to every pound of flesh promised. There’s an unexpected secret ingredient that Matt Black and Laurence Vannicelli bake into their raunchy satanic panic screenplay. A devout thematic engagement to Christianity places focus on virgins submitting to their blasphemous desires, but never once does Racela sarcastically attack or take cheap pot-shots at religion. A horror comedy about averting Christ’s scorn and questing for bare breasts that doesn’t aim for the lowest hanging fruits? Pinch me!
In a small, faith-based town near Anywhere, USA, five movie theater employees prepare for their after-hours staff watch. Chaz (Jillian Mueller) and Ricky (Glenn Stott) vote A League Of Their Own, while Todd (Larry Saperstein) pesters Abe (Evan Daves) to pick Encino Man. That’s when an aggressive vagrant breaks in, eventually chased out by projectionist “Heavy Metal” Jeff (Robbie Tann) but not before opening a hidden and sealed off theater entryway. Upon exploring, Abe finds a film canister with an unknown marking which Jeff reluctantly plays. What starts as some ’70s throwback cult horror flick turns into full-frontal pornography that Jeff nixes, but not before cursed incantations conjure their doom. With the doors locked and no escape until boss Mr. Pike (Bill Phillips) returns at midnight, sexually repressed children of God must battle a sex demon they unwittingly awaken.
There’s no distribution information on Porno as of yet, still touring the festival circuit, but here are three reasons to get down ‘n dirty with this hormonal horror wet dream when it finds release!
1. Dudes Get Just As Naked And Mangled As The Women
If there’s one normative practice horror is most guilty of, it’s stripping female characters naked while males stay bundled up in parkas. Women are often squeezed into tight lingerie, or pop cleavage, or inappropriately dressed in favor of skinsploitation. Porno does not stand for such bias, featuring just as much male booty as female tush, same for full-frontal on either gender. It’s a refreshing nod that respects how often women are objectified by ogling camera gazes, one that shares the proverbial load as a summoned creature wages sexual warfare against popcorn vendors and ticket rippers fighting for their souls’ purity.
It may seem like an odd bullet point to bring up, but my appreciation also allows for a segue into just how graphic Porno gets in terms of nudity and bodily wounds. Women have been shredded and slaughtered throughout horror history to pretty disgusting lengths, but not here. Racela’s effects team will have every male in the audience wincing, reaching downward out of ghost-pain solidarity. There’s a penile moment in Porno that’ll 1,000% go down as one of the most memorable and mangled prosthetics in all of, well, whatever year this flick gets releases. My applause recognizes practical SFX brutality and an overall commitment to perversion infiltrating everything from evil’s intentions, to pornographic videos, to churchly damnation.
2. Over-The-Top Party Horror In The Best Way
No doubt about it, Porno is rated “R” for “randy,” “rude,” and “rad as anything.” Right up there with other supernatural movie theater takeovers like Demons. Unleash a sex demon, you mess with the sex demon horns. Between shapeshifting human-on-beast makeout sessions, “Heavy Metal” Jeff’s consistently comical adherence to biblical rules, plus reels of transfixing technicolor blood orgy content, Racela keeps temptation throttled on the highest level. Fears of condemnation scare characters more than mortal wounds, while energies sustain their fully torqued intensity as Lilith (Katelyn Pearce) – the film’s succubus seductress – slices and splooges and squashes her way through Mr. Price’s rinky-dink theater.
Robbie Tann’s performance as “Heavy Metal” Jeff is crucial to Porno and its party-first genre outlook, from rousing pump-up speeches to high-strung freakouts when rolling fog (yes, in a theater) ushers Lilith’s arrival. Black and Vannicelli enjoy manipulating Christian staunchness, like Jeff’s condemnation of cigarettes (“Do you wanna get to Heaven smelling like ash!?”), while Racela plays the emcee to an apocalyptic “Birds And Bees From Hell” PSA. Expect as heavy a lean into hot-as-sin Gothic stripteases as possession aggression. Porno is hardcore gruesome, exquisitely immoral, and everything midnight madness cinema should be.
3. No Need For Crutches
Black and Vannicelli could have quickly digressed into tired Christian tropes, or better yet, lose wider audience interest to religious divides. Thankfully, character motivations indebted to the Holy Ghost flow naturally into a plot that continually labels masturbators as perverts and fornicators as heathens. Porno never feels preachy, or adversely mocking. Racela’s production steps up to a challenge and bashes it out of the park, hinging development on religious Bible-belt enthusiasm while never segregating audiences who might not see eye-to-eye with such strict or guilt-ridden beliefs. It’s not about the corruption of innocence to morph characters into something new, just sexual satanic panic plaguing victims most unequipped to handle themselves.
That’s not to say the script avoids making necessary statements. You’ll witness characters sliding into their rightful sexuality despite church retreats meant to “save.” Rebellious rule-breakers step outside their comfort zones and dabble in emo lipstick and illicit rock music. Porno is just as much about coming to terms with the fact that maybe, sometimes, rules are meant to be broken, but never by flipping two middle fingers toward the big man upstairs. Honestly, it’s an ambitious task that’s pulled off with general ease, and only makes the ensuing onslaught of gore-covered, bare body parts a rapturous climax of extreme hellfire mayhem. In a word, “buckwild.” In a few more words, “Porno knows how to make horror fans scream.” Interpret that sentence how you will.
