Quick Movie Review: Razorback (1984), sorely underrated · 5:12pm Nov 9th, 2018
Film production often follows trends. After Star Wars came out, Space Operas were revitalized. After Iron Man and the early MCU, Superhero films had a resurgence. After Jurassic Park, there was a dinosaur and Michael Crichton craze. And after Jaws, Natural Horror films were coming out of the woodwork. Some would try to be sly and use a different type of animal, often sea creatures like giant octopi or barracuda, others would just outright use a shark. Some of these are genuinely good, like “Orca: the Killer Whale”. Some of these are are So-Bad-They’re-Good, like “Grizzly” which I call “Claws” because it is literally a remake of “Jaws” in a National Park. Others are just plain bad, looking at you “The Last Shark”.
This thankfully was in the first category and actually I’d say of the 1970s-1980s Natural Horror films, Razorback is easily in the top 10 or top 5 for me. I feel part of that, aside from competent direction, effects, and acting, came from “Razorback” coming out seven years after “Jaws” so it wasn’t a rushed job trying to ride the initial wave. And while the film is often nicknamed in its native Australia as “Jaws on Trotters”, it feels to me more like someone threw “Moby Dick”, a 50s monster film, and a western into a blender.
The plot goes that there is a massive wild boar roaming the outback. In the opening scene, which I will note is genuinely very chilling, the boar is attracted to the sounds of a infant boy being put to bed by his grandfather. The boar attacks the kindly old man, rams down the door, and rampages through the house and knocks over several lamps. The monster hog grabs the child and smashes its way out of the house as the structure catches fire. The grandfather tearfully limps off into bush, calling out to his grandson’s increasingly distant screams as his house goes up in flames. Roll title.
Years later, after an American journalist goes to the distant outback town to report on the mass slaughter of wildlife by a pet food factory and stumbles into the grandfather from the intro. While acquitted of charges he murdered his grandson, no one believed him about the giant boar and he’s become embittered and vengeful; taking up his old rifle and truck to become a boar hunter. He points her to the factory but warns her against investigating. She doesn’t heed his warnings and runs afoul with a pair of psychopaths working at the plant who run her car off the road after she films their poaching as well as a distant shot of the giant boar. They attempt to kill and or force themselves on her, but are driven off by a large predator. But just as we believe we have our heroine for the movie, the boar fully reveals itself and tears apart the reporter’s car to eat her. Soon after her husband comes looking for his missing wife, grouping up with the boar hunter, his biologist assistant, as both the boar is rampaging and the psychopaths are looking to cover their tracks with no loose ends….
Now on paper, a giant feral hog doesn’t sound like the first choice for an animal monster. But there are many animals that are extremely easy to underestimate.A feral hog or wild boar is not just a pig with an attitude and bigger tusks. They can get bigger than any tiger, run down a man, go through his legs like a cannonball, and tear him to pieces. And unlike other hoofed animals, hogs will eat flesh and have been known to prey on other creatures actively. Now make an animal that is fully lethal at 100 kilograms and scale it to an animal over 1000 kilograms. And getting slammed into, trampled, bit, and gored is not a pleasant way to go.
It helps the methods used to portray the Razorback hold up very well. You don’t see it often, but when shown its either via a full size animatronic used for most of the action scenes, or by a real pig or piglet with prosthetics and a suit on for shots of the animal running or walking. And thankfully because the effects teams communicated a lot, it doesn’t suffer from a common movie problem of the effects not matching each other. Aside from knowledge the machine couldn’t move its legs very well or ‘breath’ or unsafe shots like when the Razorback rams through glass and gets stabbed, it is very difficult to tell what shots are the animal actor and what’s the robot. The sound design is also very well done, using actual hog noises deepened in pitch that remind you pigs do more than just oink. This thing shrieks and snarls in ways that are both realistic and chilling.
And unlike many monster films, this boar has no defined origin. It’s not a genetic, chemical, or radiation mutant. It wasn’t spawned by the pet food factor. It’s just a normal, but gigantic and very aggressive Sus scrofa. In that “Jaws” tradition, you can believe why so many characters are blindsided by this thing as nothing could have predicted such a monster existing.
Another major set of props to the film is the photography. Often when horror films try to scare someone, they do it by making it claustrophobic where you can’t see anything because its either very cramped inside a building or in a dense forest. But for a film where 90% of the scarier parts happen in the Outback, the opposite kicks in. The sheer vastness of the desert and scrublands makes the characters and viewers feel tiny. A huge vast expanse of absolutely nothing stretching for miles. It gives the film a bleak, dirty, empty feeling where the monster can show up in broad daylight and still be just as scary as any slasher villain in an old dark house. In this setting you can run in any direction you please, but you’ll always be exposed to the monster and elements and you’ll never be able to hide. There is no safe haven where predators and killers can see you kilometers away and chase you down. In this way, the scenes set in the Outback are just as bleak and disturbing as the finale taking place inside the dark, grimy, gore spattered food plant.
The acting is also very well done and the characters are all distinct. Unlike most “Ahab” styled characters, Jake Cullen played by Bill Kerr is never anything worse than gruff with any of the protagonists. He’s standoffish, but very sympathetic as you can see the death of his grandson destroyed the life of a previously very kindly old man. He still assists the protagonist and has a mutual kindness and respect to the local biologist, the only arrogance he shows is denying getting other hunters for back-up and going after the Razorback solo.
Gregory Harrison plays our lead, Carl Winters, has a good range. He runs the gambit of saddened and grieving when Jake finds his wife’s wedding ring, to scared out of his wits when having his run-in with the boar, some comedic bits when he faints (after wandering the Outback in a daze) upon walking in on Cameron, played by Arkie Whiteley, in her shower, to pissed off and on the attack when confronted with the psychotic Dicko and Benny. His showdown with the boar across the outback and then into the factory does a good job at showing him off as brave without turning sudden from an everyman into an action hero.
Speaking of Ms. Whiteley’s character, Cameron makes a great female lead. Competent in her work, pitying and assisting Jake like a daughter-figure, and rushing off to help Carl in the climax. There is some hints she and Carl might be attracted to each other, but it’s played tactfully and isn’t rush or really paid off by the end.
The Baker brothers, Benny played by Chris Haywood and Dicko by David Argue, do a good job as secondary villains. Cruel, crude, and thuggish without being over the top despite not looking very imposing. They don’t steal the spotlight of threat from the boar, as they shouldn’t in the movie, but they do a good work as an additional threat and plot driver. Good character work for a pair who’s primary work are as a director and comedic actor respectively.
Really the only complaints I have is the pacing gets a bit tedious in the middle and I would have liked to see the boar on screen some more given how good the effects are. Honestly, while the film itself isn’t as good as “Jaws”, I’d very much argue the effects are actually better. Some may not like it, but of all the films or scenarios where the bacon eats you; this is the top of the list.
Australia.. is there anything that WON'T horribly slaughter you there?
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Actually, Florida has more native large carnivores :P
And the funny thing is that there were giant pigs, at least in prehistory.
Including a family of pig like relatives that had some of the scariest dental work nature ever came up with: the Entelodonts
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Actually, Entelodonts were closer in relation to hippos and the ancestors of whales than pigs. They do look the part though.
The largest genuine swine was Kubanochoerus, a draft horse size prehistoric hog with a unicorn horn in boars, though some record size African Forest Hogs and Wild Boars can reach similar masses.
orig00.deviantart.net/15e4/f/2014/203/d/5/kubanochoerus_by_wsnyder-d7rtdxh.png
I sat through that movie. It's atrocious. I literally just called all of the characters "Stupid-Jaws Character Name" i.e. Stupid-Brody, Stupid-Quint, etc. But the scene that takes the stupid-cake was the scene where they mayor character tried to kill the shark by hanging a big hunk of meat out of a helicopter, and NOTHING ELSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Maybe, but still way more things that will kill you down under, and they are smaller, so easier to not see coming. Or, stuff like the platypus, that won't actually kill you... it will just make you wish it had.
Hell the birds down there intentionally spread brush fires.
4965486
Huh, didn't know that...
But yeah, nature can seriously come up with some scary stuff.
Maybe you can do a Paleo Profile on the 'Pig from Hell'
Now that I think about it. I remember my father mentioning this film some years ago, but I didn't think much about it at the time. I'll give this movie a watch when I can, though I'd also like to see this movie on one of your future livestreams. Heck, I'd like to even play this kind of scenario on a Mauve Shirt playthrough one day.
Oh, yeah, this looks like my kind of horror movie.
And Australia, the greatest concentration of things that can seriously mess man up anywhere in the world.
So are we not going to talk about the fact that there's nudity right in the trailer?
I've heard of this movie and have wanted to see it, but never found it anywhere.
I love the premise, as it has a very unique animal for one of these movies, but I'm a sucker for good practical effects and this one definitely has that.
I also do find that lack of origin for the monster very interesting too. Not all monsters NEED origins.
And as discussed in your Smilodon blog post, there needs to be way more mammelian monsters in monster movies. Always sea creatures, reptiles, insects, or the occasional bird. There are lots of creatures that'd be really dangerous when scaled up.
Never heard of this film before. I do remember reading about and watching a few clips of Grizzly and Piranha, another one of those films released during the Jaws craze.
I watched this movie and it gave me chills because of the vastness it freaked me the hell out. I’m still afraid to watch to this day.
Pigs
there's a reason that the pig scene in Return to Thunderdome wasn't played for comedy
same in Wizard of Oz
mmmmh.......... BACEN!