Razorback is one of the first movies from Russell Mulcahy who later goes on to direct Highlander. Here you get the giant boar version of a Moby Dick tale with the old hunter Jake Cullen in his quest for revenge and to kill the huge razorback the took his grandson (we later on discover that it also took his daughter) but also made him a laughing stock and under suspicion of the Outback community for the disappearance of his family, because we know nobody in their right mind is going to believe that a huge Razorback boar came plowing through your house.
Here we have the Australian outback, beautiful, breathtaking, serene and filled with the wonderful bird chorus.
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| Wouldn't you want to camp out on that landscape? |
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| Gorgeous sunset and meet the local wildlife |
Sometimes though all this wonderful peace and being with nature can be destroyed by a really whiny little brat of a child moaning and whining, this problem can then be solved by a bright blue light and a massive Razorback smashing straight through your house -
Two years follow on and Beth Winters a reporter who soon wishes she wasn't against the hunting of game animals is planning to go to the Australian outback to campaign her cause and tell the story of the vicious hunting of animals to be made into food then given to other animals, that is going on. This turns out to be one of the worse decisions in the history of media reporting she has ever made, not quite as bad as her husband's choice of aprons though.
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| Look closely he's got one sexy ladies body going on |
Not long after she arrives her and her cameraman receive quite harsh treatment from the locals, because they are seen as being a threat to their outback way of life, how dare these outsiders come into their turf and tell them what's right and what's wrong. Beth decides she's going to investigate the meat processing plant that the hunted meat has been finding itself at. This where the "steampunk rebels" Benny and Dicko come into it, they both work at the processing plant but they are also pretty deranged and wouldn't have looked out of place in a hill billy family movie.
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| They would have made excellent Kangaroos in Tank Girl |
Beth finds an unfortunate with these two when they discover her snooping around the meat processing plant taking pictures.
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| Does this put you off meat? |
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| Maybe this does? Those evil butchers! |
After taking the much needed damaging footage she wanted of the meat processing plant, to expose those cruel savage bastards and to alert the mass world-wide audience of what was going into their animal food, I think it was dog food. Benny and Dicko catch up with her, essentially kidnap her and then once they got her in the outback, tempted to attack her. But they get interrupted with our good old friend the giant murderous Razorback who had almost been forgotten about at this point. Instead of this being a saviour though it gets much worse for Beth Winters who up until this had thought that all animals were beautiful kind creatures who didn't deserve any harsh treatment, yeah right!
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| Just gaze upon that beautiful kind merciful and forgiving face before it fucks you |
Benny and Dicko those post apocalyptic wannabe pussies leave her to her terrible fate with the Razorback. Beth is now suspected missing so her husband Carl previously seen in rather unforgiving feminine kitchen attire now goes from vanilla house husband to macho man that's going to get his wife back or at the very least find out what happened to her, so he goes off on a one man crusade into the deep unknown.
Upon his investigation Carl initiates himself with the Australian stereotypes that left his wife to the Razorback, upon fear of getting linked to Beth's untimely death, they leave Carl for dead out in the middle of nowhere. This part of the movie provides for a visual feast as Carl hallucinates with exhaustion and fatigued whilst wandering alone out in the rough wilds of the outback. I'm always a fun of dream or delusional sequences in movies, they always provide a chance demonstrate different artistic skills from the director, who had also had quite a prominent career directing music videos for artists such as The Vapours "Turning Japanese", The Buggles "Video Killed The Radio Star", Ultravox "Vienna" and a host of other musicians, just a little bit of trivia for you there.
Carl's Hallucination
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| Were you thinking, what I was thinking....? |
Lucky for Carl he ends up getting rescued by a hot Australian babe who is working on a wildlife tracking project but also happens to be friends with Jake Cullen the man who was so cruelly wronged by the giant Razorback as well when it tore through his home. You know her home must be cool when she's got a wombat chillin' and killin' on her front poach
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| A wombat chilling in a hanging chair, what else is there to say, WIN. |
So begins the wild boar chase
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| COME AT ME BITCHES!! |
The show down of Carl and Jake vs Razorback at the end of the film is actually quite a lot of fun, you get some good action shots and in my opinion tense moments, it's a proper 80s action movie/creature feature finale. I don't want to spoil it too much because I think people should go and watch the movie, it's quite underrated in some cases and I found it more to my liking then a lot of animal attack films I've watched before, I would even go out on a limb here and liken it to the piggy version of Jaws almost.
I will however say that this is one of my favourite action stills from the final "battle" -
