Razorback (film)

Jake Cullen (Bill Kerr) is babysitting his grandson at his house in the Australian outback when a massive razorback boar attacks him, smashing through his house and carrying off his grandson to devour alive. Jake is accused of murdering the child and while his account of the events are met with considerable scepticism, he is ultimately acquitted due to lack of evidence for accountability. The event destroys his credibility and reputation however, and he vows revenge on the boar.

Two years later, American wildlife reporter Beth Winters (Judy Morris) journeys to the outback to document the hunting of Australian wildlife to be processed into pet food at a run-down factory. Beth gets video footage of two thugs, Benny Baker (Chris Haywood) and his brother Dicko (David Argue) illegally making pet food out of animals and is subsequently chased down by them by car. They catch up, force her off the road and attempt to rape her only to be chased off by the same boar that killed Jake's grandson. Beth attempts to take shelter in her car but the hog rips off the door, drags her out and eats her. With no witnesses, her disappearance is subsequently ruled an accident resulting from having fallen down an abandoned mine shaft after leaving her wrecked car.

Some time later, Beth's husband Carl (Gregory Harrison) travels to Australia in search of her and encounters Jake, whom Beth interviewed during her initial report. Jake refers him to the local cannery where he meets Benny and Dicko. He pretends to be a Canadian visitor and convinces them to take him along on their next kangaroo hunt, only to be abandoned by them when he spoils a potential kill. Carl is then attacked by a herd of wild pigs, spurred on by the giant boar, who chase him through the night and force him take shelter atop a windmill. The next morning the pigs knock over the windmill but Carl is saved by landing in a pond at the windmill's base, in which the pigs fear to swim.

Once the pigs leave Carl attempts to make his way back to civilisation, all the while suffering from dehydration-induced hallucinations, before finally reaching the house of Sarah Cameron (Arkie Whiteley): a friend of Jake who has been studying the local pig population and the only one who believes his story of the giant razorback. While recovering at Sarah's house, Carl learns from Sarah that something has been causing the wild pigs excess stress, leading them into unusual behaviour such as increased aggression and cannibalising their own young. Meanwhile, after learning that Carl had seen the razorback, Jake sets out for the pumping station and manages to shoot it with one of Sarah's tracking darts. He also finds Beth's wedding ring in the boar's faeces which he returns to a grieving Carl.

After overhearing a radio conversation suggesting that Jake knows what really happened to Beth Winters, Benny and Dicko, fearful that Jake is attempting to implicate them in her death, attack him at his camp, breaking his legs with bolt-cutters and leaving him to be killed by the razorback. His remains are later found by Sarah and Carl, along with marks in the dirt made by Dicko's cleaver. Realising that the brothers were responsible for both his wife and Jake's death, Carl attacks Benny at his and Dicko's lair, interrogating Benny by dangling him over a mine shaft before dropping him into it. As Sarah rounds up a posse to hunt down the razorback using the tracker Jake shot into it, Carl corners Dicko at the cannery when the razorback suddenly appears and mauls Dicko before Carl can shoot him. The razorback then chases Carl into the factory when Sarah suddenly arrives and is seemingly killed by the boar, who continues to pursue Carl even after impaling its throat on a broken pipe. In its maddened rampage, the razorback ends up damaging the cannery's generator which sends the machines running out of control as Carl lures the boar up onto a conveyor belt that throws it onto a giant fan, chopping it to pieces. After shutting down the machinery, Carl finds and rescues Sarah, who had merely been knocked unconscious, and the two embrace.

• Gregory Harrison as Carl Winters
• Arkie Whiteley as Sarah Cameron
• Bill Kerr as Jake Cullen
• Chris Haywood as Benny Baker
• David Argue as Dicko Baker
• Judy Morris as Beth Winters
• John Howard as Danny
• John Ewart as Turner
• Don Smith as Wallace
• Mervyn Drake as Andy
• Redmond Phillips as the Magistrate
• Alan Becher as Counsel (credited as Alan Beecher)
• Peter Schwarz as Lawyer (as Peter Schwartz)
• Beth Child as Louise Cullen
• Rick Kennedy as Farmer

Razorback was directed by Russell Mulcahy and mostly shot in Broken Hill, New South Wales.[1][2] Director of photography Dean Semler was hired on the strength of his work in Mad Max 2. Some commentators have written that the film may have been inspired by the 1980 death of Azaria Chamberlain, whose mother was accused of murder after a dingo snatched the infant.[3]

The razorback boar was an animatronic. Effects man Bob McCarron designed a total of six boars for the film, one of them designed to ram vehicles.[4] The shoot used one of the first batches of a new fast film stock developed by Kodak, which resulted in quite high-resolution shots. Mulcahy originally considered Jeff Bridges for the role of Carl, but producer Hal McElroy considered he had too little international appeal.[5]

Razorback was released in Australia on April 19, 1984, and grossed $801,000 at the box office.[6] The film was given a limited release theatrically in the United States by Warner Bros. in November. 1984. It grossed $150,140 at the box office in the United States.[7]

Following various VHS video releases, the film was issued on DVD in Australia by Umbrella Entertainment on September 21, 2005. It was presented in 2.40:1 widescreen with a 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack and the original 2.0 Dolby Stereo soundtrack. Special features included the 70-minute featurette "Jaws on Trotters"; an audio interview with actor Gregory Harrison; four brief pre-release deleted scenes with extra gore, sourced from VHS tape; a photo gallery; and an original theatrical trailer.

Razorback was subsequently released on DVD in various other countries, including the US, UK, France and Germany, though they only contain varying quantities of the Australian disc's extras.[8] The US release was by Warner Home Video, as part of the Warner Archive Collection, and only contains 2.0 stereo audio and the theatrical trailer.[9]

In 2014, Umbrella Entertainment released the film on Blu-ray with all of the prior DVDs extras and an additional 84 minutes of cast and crew interviews. The disc featured a remastered HD transfer.

In August, 2018, Umbrella Entertainment released a newly remastered edition Blu-Ray featuring a 4k transfer of the theatrical cut and a VHS-sourced version of the uncut film. In addition to porting over all previous supplements, newly produced extras include an audio commentary by director Russell Mulcahy and the retrospective "A Certain Piggish Nature: Looking Back at Razorback."

Razorback received mixed reviews from critics, with several critics compared the film to Steven Spielberg's Jaws.[10]

Empire Magazine awarded the film two out of five stars, writing, "The oddball nightmare style is effective but the prop pig and under par acting let the film down."[11] TV Guide also gave the film two out of five stars, commending the film's cinematography, but stated that the film was "too repetitive (and sometimes simply too silly) to be truly engaging".[12] Variety Magazine gave the film a positive review, writing, "The plot may be a bit familiar, but Razorback is no quickie: it’s an extremely handsome production, beautifully shot by Dean Semler."[13]

• Boar
• Cinema of Australia

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• Razorback on IMDb
• Razorback at Oz Movies
• Razorback at the National Film and Sound Archive
• Razorback at AllMovie
• Razorback at Australian Screen Online
• Razorback at Rotten Tomatoes