Bob Clark, 67; Directed 'A Christmas Story' and 'Porky's'

Bob Clark, 67, whose film "A Christmas Story" became a seasonal fixture for its bittersweet cataloguing of holiday dreams and disappointments, was killed April 4 with his son in a Los Angeles car crash.

Mr. Clark and Ariel Hanrath-Clark, 22, were traveling on the Pacific Coast Highway in the Pacific Palisades when they were killed, said Lyne Leavy, Mr. Clark's personal assistant. Their car was struck head-on by a sport-utility vehicle that was in the wrong lane, police said.

The driver of the other vehicle, Hector Velazquez-Nava, 24, of Los Angeles was arrested and booked for investigation of driving under the influence of alcohol and gross vehicular manslaughter. He was being held on $100,000 bail.

Mr. Clark, a native of Birmingham, had a prolific movie and TV directing career. He specialized in horror movies and thrillers early on, directing such 1970s movies as "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things," "Murder by Decree," "Breaking Point" and "Black Christmas," which was remade last year.

His breakout success came with 1981's sex farce "Porky's," a coming-of-age romp that he followed two years later with "Porky's II: The Next Day."

"It was the most vulgar, outrageous movie," Mr. Clark once said of "Porky's," "but it was honest. That's how we grew up. Every single one of those stories is true. Everything in 'Porky's' was collected from high schools around the nation, because I realized that high schools are the repository of our ritual of our sexual coming of age, which is an important part of what life is about."

The financial success of "Porky's" gave him clout to make "A Christmas Story," a 1983 film he directed, co-produced and co-wrote based on Jean Shepherd's childhood memoir of a boy in the 1940s.

The film starred Peter Billingsley as Ralphie Parker, a boy determined to get a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas.

The film was a modest theatrical success, but critics loved it. It eventually joined "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Miracle on 34th Street" as one of the Christmas films that audiences watch year after year.

In 1994, Mr. Clark directed a forgettable sequel, "It Runs in the Family," featuring Charles Grodin, Mary Steenburgen and Kieran Culkin in a continuation of Shepherd's memoirs.

In recent years, Mr. Clark made family comedies that were savaged by critics, including "Karate Dog," "Baby Geniuses" and its sequel, "Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2."

Among Mr. Clark's other movies were Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton's "Rhinestone," Timothy Hutton's "Turk 182!" and Gene Hackman and Dan Aykroyd's "Loose Cannons."