Who knows what
Dave Edmunds was thinking when he agreed to produce and assemble the soundtrack to 1985's
Porky's Revenge! It's easier to see the motives of the movie's producers -- they were flush with cash after two successful teen-sex comedies set in the '50s, and who would be better to create a new soundtrack of old-time rock & roll than
Edmunds, who was not only well-known for his retro-rock, but was riding a wave of popularity after a pair of MTV-friendly
Jeff Lynne-produced albums in the mid-'80s. That makes sense. What boggles the mind is that
Edmunds, after accepting the job, decided to treat this soundtrack -- which, let's remember, is the second sequel to a film best known for a scene of horny teenage boys spying on the girls in a gym shower and for a female character called "Lassie" who howls like a dog during orgasm -- as a prestige project, recruiting such superstars as
George Harrison,
Carl Perkins,
Jeff Beck,
Willie Nelson, and
Robert Plant (performing under the Crawling King Snakes moniker with
Phil Collins on drums!), along with the up-and-coming
Fabulous Thunderbirds, to record new material for this exploitation film! And they agreed to do it! Most amazingly of all, they wound up with a neat little record, something that's far more fun than the accompanying film.
Edmunds keeps it simple here, never straying from his own aesthetic of modernizing classic rock & roll, hiring a house band and letting his guest stars do their thing. Apart from
Harrison, who cut a previously unrecorded
Bob Dylan song "I Don't Want to Do It" (which is quite nice), and
Plant, who does a nifty revival of
Charlie Rich's rockabilly nugget "Philadelphia Baby," there aren't too many surprises in song selection, but all the performances are infectious --
Perkins is having fun with "Blue Suede Shoes,"
Kim Wilson sings "Stagger Lee" with vigor,
Beck's re-creation of "Sleepwalk" is uncanny -- and the result is simply a good time. Yes, the production has dated a little bit, particularly on the blah instrumental theme song but to a lesser extent on
Edmunds' otherwise fun new tune "High School Nights," but that's a minor flaw, because records often do sound like the year they were recorded in. It's far better to dwell on the fact that a third-rate sequel like
Porky's Revenge! could produce a soundtrack this good, because that is a mystery for the ages. [Columbia/Legacy's 2004 reissue contains two bonus tracks: a version of "Honey Don't" cut by
Carl Perkins at the same
Porky's Revenge! session that produced "Blue Suede Shoes," and
Dave Edmunds' "Don't Call Me Tonight," which was also released on his 1983 album Information as well as the B-side of the "Do You Wanna Dance" single from
Porky's Revenge!] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine