Clark and his collaborator for this film, screenwriter and makeup artist Alan Ormsby, would revisit the zombie subgenre in 1972's Deathdream, also known by its alternative title, Dead of Night, a Vietnam War allegory that takes its cue from the classic short story "The Monkey's Paw".
[10] Turning toward more serious fare, Clark scored a critical success with the Sherlock Holmes film Murder by Decree, starring Christopher Plummer and James Mason, which won five Genie Awards including Best Achievement in Direction and Best Performance for both leads.
Clark had a detailed outline based on his own youth in Florida, which he dictated into a cassette recorder due to illness, and collaborator Roger Swaybill said of listening to the tapes, "I became convinced that I was sharing in the birth of a major moment in movie history.
The overwhelming success of Porky's is credited as launching the genre of the teen sex comedy[11] so prevalent throughout the 1980s, and which continued into the millennium in such films as the American Pie series.
Clark wrote, produced, and directed the film's first sequel, Porky's II: The Next Day (1983), which did not feature the title character, and introduced two new antagonists with perhaps greater relevance, a blustering fundamentalist preacher, and a sleazy local politician who cynically caters to his influence, while seducing a teenage girl.
[12] Although not a box-office smash in its theatrical release, A Christmas Story would go on to become a perennial holiday favorite via repeated TV airings and home video.
A joint effort at a sequel in 1994, My Summer Story, did not fare as well; Maltin said that the studio waited too long, and Clark was forced to recast almost the entire film.
[12] Three other film versions of the Parker family had been produced for television by PBS with Shepherd's involvement during the late 1980s, also with a different cast, but without Clark's participation.
[9] Police determined that the SUV's driver, Héctor Manuel Velázquez-Nava, had a blood alcohol level of three times the legal limit and was driving without a license.