RAZORBACK (1984)

RAZORBACK (1984)

Tagline: It's waiting outside and it can sense your fear. No nightmare will prepare you for it!

(Horror, Thriller, Giant Crazed Animals) [R]

There's something about blasting the s—t out of a razorback that brightens up my whole day.

In this one, Jack Cullen’s grandson is “taken” by a giant razorback that attacks his house in the middle of the night. Years later a reporter from New York named Beth Winters has shown up in the outback of Australia to research kangaroo poaching but also goes missing. Her fiancé Carl arrives in Australia shortly after he gets the news and realizes none of the locals liked his wife or want to help him. After a series of events he eventually gets help from Cullen who believes the razorback also got Carl’s wife, and Sarah who has some animal tracking equipment. Can they track down this gigantic boar before the razorback kills again? 

One thing both Jenn and I noticed about this movie is that it is shot extremely weirdly. It feels like the director had some sort of a twitch or something that just caused all kinds of shots to off-kilter, different filters were used in the same shot, I have no idea what was going on. Then we find out that this guy Russell Mulcahy who directed the movie also shot the “New Moon On Monday” video for the 80’s mega-hit wonders DURAN DURAN. Now it all comes together. He used those same stylistic methods to shoot this thing. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help or hurt in the final result, it’s more of a distraction. 

To start with the good stuff, the acting in this is pretty solid. I do think we had a few really stupid throwaway characters that weren’t even close to be essential to the plot, but outside of that Gregory Harrison (who is still acting), Bill Kerr who had 91 acting credits, Judy Morris who currently has 60 credits and is known for writing HAPPY FEET and Arkie Whiteley who is best known for MAD MAX II all did outstanding jobs in their respective roles. 

The soundtrack was also solid just because it had DURAN DURAN in it, but the score is solid as well. I also can’t say enough about how beautiful certain parts of Australia are. We don’t see the razorback a lot in this movie which is disappointing with the full-scale model costing $250,000, but when we do see it, it looks freakin amazing. 

Where this movie goes off the rails is in the whole storyline involving these kangaroo poachers. Not only are the actors terrible in this, but the rapey scenes are also just way out there and what happens after that scene just adds insult to injury. I also couldn’t understand more than 2 or 3 words out of every few sentences these dudes said. I love Australian accents and understand them just fine. Everyone else in the movie sounded great. Heck, I even had my iPhone Suri in an Australian accent for a year. So when I say I couldn’t understand much of what they are saying, that’s pretty bad. 

Note - Wild boars were called 'razorbacks' because of their high, hair-covered backbone and ill-mannered temper. This is mostly Australian slang, scientifically ‘razorbacks’ are feral pigs. They are very tough however they have thick fat deposits that act as almost a natural armor. They are not quite as tough as the film indicates though. 

Too much of this movie is in the dark and hard to see, but there are some things that make up for it, especially the acting even though Jack is a crusty old jerk. So what I am going to do is split the difference here and give this one a 3 out of 7.
 

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