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Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oh Boy.
Take ample parts of the original Mad Max, Evil Dead, and Jaws, and give it an eco-horror backstory, and you have Razorback.
Razorback is the cautionary tale about a wild giant mutated hog that wreaks havoc on a small village in the middle of the Australian Outback. The only things around are hunters and a dog food plant. The dog food plant is there for all the hunters to bring their dead kangaroos.
Some of the scenes in the food plant are savage and visceral, with hanging dead kangaroo bodies everywhere. The locals running the plant, including Dicko, look like rejects out of “Road Warrior.” They act like it as well.
The movie opens with Jake Cullen, a wild hog hunter, having his home destroyed. In the process, his grandson is taken by the rampaging monster hog.
Fast forward some time, and we meet Beth Winters. A reporter from New York sets out to cover the genocidal slaughter of Kangaroos in the outback. She is met with resistance by the locals, who eventually run her off the road, beat her up, and attempt to rape her. The Razorback shows up, and the locals run off, leaving her to be molested and eaten by the hog. This is a very well-shot sequence similar to Quint being eaten in Jaws. It is convincingly unsettling.
Her husband Carl, played by Gregory Harrison, flies in, and with Jake’s help, they set out to end the Razorback’s reign of terror. Things don’t go as planned, of course. In fact, most of our main characters die way before the finale.
A lot of sequences are shot in a very Evil Dead kind of way. Once Carl gets stranded in the desert, we have these crazy hallucination-style scenes. The bright coloring in these dreamscapes lends quite a bit to its surreal feel.
Behind the camera is none other than Highlander director Russell Mulcahy. Some of his shots were so creative that Spielberg called him, to ask him how he created these scenes. There must be a plethora of destroyed cars in Australia just lying around to be filmed for a destruction derby. It seems to be Australia’s thing, and this movie has plenty of armored car crashes.
Quite a few cast members from the Mad Max series were involved with this. Also. We are given a contribution from Duran Duran for the soundtrack as well. This movie has a very Tremors feel to it, making the film more fun in the process. Jaws clones don’t get better than this.
Shout! Factory’s 2023 Blu-ray release looks great and retains a decent amount of that early 80’s grain we still long for.
