A shallow Broadway press agent learns he is dying just as his son by his ex-wife arrives for a visit.
Bob Clark began making independent low-budget features as a writer/director with the transvestite comedy The She Man in 1967, and his horror films of the early ‘70s, made with writer/actor Alan Ormsby, are fondly remembered: Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (signed as Benjamin Clark) and Deathdream (aka Dead of Night; Night Walk). Clark also won admiration for his Sherlock Holmes film Murder By Decree, scripted by John Hopkins. None of this could compare to the box-office success Clark would find in the early ‘80s with his seminal low-brow sex comedy Porky’s and its first sequel. Reviled by critics but eaten up by audiences, the films’ horny-yet-nostalgic tone would forever influence the world of teen movies. It was Clark’s 1983 project, however, an adaptation of Jean Shepherd’s writings called A Christmas Story, that would prove to be the director’s finest moment. The pitch-perfect holiday farce failed to find an audience despite strong reviews upon its initial release, but… read more
