‘Saturday the 14th’ actually does recover a bit to get funnier, but only about 45 minutes in. It’s painfully average. I wish it were worse. That might help. It should be a spoof, based on the title alone, or at least a complete farce. Instead, it’s a comedy with horror elements, and the creepiest part is how it treats an underage female character. Oof.
Richard Benjamin, our lead, is of fine comedic stock with many of his projects, including his underrated ‘The Money Pit’ as a director. As an actor, he adds very little- we can tell he adores the jokes, but he’s not convincing as the jokester. Severn Darden and Jeffrey Tambor are the real talents, and Darden in particular is worth watching alone for his deadpan pun delivery.
The basic story- a family inherits a “cursed” house, which happens to be the target of two vampires. The book they want from inside is opened by accident, which releases evil into the real world, harassing the leads
Wonderful little exchanges like these are littered in the film’s second half:
“We charge by the bat!”
“You don’t look like an exterminator.”
“That’s to fool the bats!”
Written on a window, in the style of a standard slasher warning:
“Soon all ded!”
The puns are the fun part. I began to feel uneasy about the film’s intentions once it became clear the camera was being used to leer at the young Kari Michaelsen. She was 19 during filming, but was clearly playing someone 15-16 at most. An entire drawn-out scene is dedicated to following her around in a towel, in a tub, and cowering from a monster, camera conveniently angled.
Not only does the film take an oddly serious and charged turn during this stretch, the leering camera revealed a creepy side to the filmmaking I wasnt expecting. With ‘Porky’s’, we knew what we were walking into. This was just all sorts of frown-worthy.