Today’s Halloween Horrors post brings with it a heavy dose of nostalgia for yours truly as I clearly remember discovering this film not too long after its initial release. Our series this year features a long and varied list of films, and many of us can clearly watching some of these films for the first time, whether that be in a theater during their initial releases or possibly on home video. However, today’s film topic is one that I first discovered courtesy of network television. 

Normally, the idea of watching a film that has been heavily edited to remove “the good stuff” is not one most of us would choose. However, for a young kid in the 1980s who normally wouldn’t have been allowed to watch the film in its unedited form, programs such as USA Network’s “Saturday Nightmares” were my horror heaven. I specifically mention “Saturday Nightmares” not only because it introduced me to films such as Basket Case, The Brood, and Girls Nite Out, but because I’m fairly certain that its where I first discovered today’s film… 1984’s Razorback.

Today’s Halloween Horrors 2024 post comes to us from returning contributor Michelle Kinnison, who first joined us for 2018’s series with a look at Creature from the Black Lagoon. With this year’s contribution, Michelle shares her own dose of nostalgia for this still somewhat overlooked “killer animal” spectacle from director Russell Mulcahy.

 

Razorback

This one holds a special place. I’m unsure of when I watched it the first time; probably when I was closer to 8, maybe 10. When I did, it added to the fear. A fear of a recurring nightmare that I was having at the time of a giant pig that was raging through a town and shredding all my friends and family to a bloody horrifying death. This went on randomly for a few years, until maybe some realization happened, or I got older, but this association was definitely cemented in me forever.

“Out here… is where it will find you. She was the last one to see it.”

We begin with a grandfather babysitting his grandson, somewhere in the outback of Australia. As the grandfather, Jake, puts his crying grandson to bed, upset by the storm, Jake hears something outside the house. Loading a gun, he goes out to investigate. With eerie lighting from the moon and windmill outside, Jake peers into the dark. You hear the child inside crying for his mommy as a massive boar comes charging through the fence, side swiping Jake, and smashing into the house. You see the boar smashing through the nursery and starting a fire. Jake makes his way into the house and realizes his grandson is gone and the boar has him. He goes back out yelling into the night for Scotty. In the distance, between the calls for him, you can hear the child screaming, the house ablaze in the background.

 

Jake is then accused of murder. Due to lack of evidence, he is acquitted of the crime, but he loses his credibility and becomes somewhat of a recluse, seeking revenge on the boar.

Two years later, a journalist named Beth Winters, journeys to the outback to report on the hunting of Australian wildlife that might be processed into pet food at a run-down factory. She tries to interview Jake to learn that he hunts boar, but while trying to interview him, he takes off. While at the bar she has a small run-in with two brothers. Beth leaves to get some film for her story and films the giant Razorback on the horizon. A truck drives by with bodies of kangaroos hanging off hooks. She follows it and takes video of the cannery and the two brothers from the bar. They see her, trying to take the camera, but she’s able to leave and drives away with them watching.

Beth heads back to town, but the brothers come barreling onto the road at her, trying to drive her off and wreck her. Beth crashes off the road and the brothers come back around with the intent to “make love” with her. She tries to fight, but Dicko threatens her with a clever. In the dark, there’s some noises and soon the razorback comes out and hits the truck, scaring off the men. Beth tries to take shelter in her car, but the boar rips into the car and attacks and eats her.

A tow truck comes to pick up the car and the driver makes comments that it’s better to leave it, people out there in the night hitting posts and leaving the car. Only, one side of the car is ripped open like someone took a giant can opener to it. Jake is there as well, assessing the scene and makes the connection that the razorback is back.

Jake goes and sees the brothers. Talking with Benny, he says they were there; they saw it. Benny says they didn’t see anything. No boars and no women. Dicko pops up with a shotgun and Jake leaves. Dicko takes a couple of pot shots at him, saying he’s a crazy old bugger.

Through flashbacks we see Carl, Beth’s husband, traveling to find her.  We hear about Jake and the ruling of Beth’s so-called disappearance. Carl meets up with the bar owner and asks for a room and where he might find Jake Cullen. He borrows the landlord’s car and drives off to meet Jake. Once at Jake’s, he tells him that he’s there looking for his wife and says Jake’s probably the last one to see her alive. They start talking and he asks Jake what happened. Jake tells him “Razorbacks”, and explains the species. He gets agitated with Jake’s explanation and asks for clues, or where to start. Jake says to try Pet Pak cannery. Carl meets the brothers, Benny and Dicko, and convinces them that he’s visiting from Canada and gets them to take him along on a kangaroo hunt.

He travels with the brothers to their home while they wait to go out on the hunt. Meanwhile, we see a man in his house watching TV. He hears a noise and goes outside to check a trap, but nothing there. Carl’s woken up to get ready for hunting.  The guys talk and Carl asks if the guys know about Beth Winters. They get a little suspicious and want to know why he asks questions and why he came to the Pet Pak, but he says Jake told him they could talk about Opal Mines. Once out, Carl is told to use the spotlight to find the kangaroos. They drive around a desolate looking area with trees and find a kangaroo. Dicko shoots, but wounds it. Carl pukes on his head and then gets out to finish the job since it’s not dead. The brothers leave him, telling him they’ll be back in 4-5 hours and that he needs to gut and skin it. Left out  in the woods, Carl has to snuggle up to the kangaroo for warmth and starts having nightmares until he wakes up to a pack of boars. Carl is chased through the rest of the night by them, frenzied up by the giant boar. He runs through the night and soon finds shelter and safety at the top of a windmill. The next morning the pigs knock over the windmill, but Carl lands into a pond at the base that the pigs seem to have a fear about entering (like maybe they can’t swim) and yells “You can’t get me!”

Once they leave, Carl tries to make his way back to town or some sort of civilization. He reaches the house of a lady named Sarah, who is also a friend of Jake’s and has been studying the pigs. She is the only person who believes that there is a giant boar. While Carl is recovering from dehydration and the attack, they talk about what happened and the pig attack. He mentions that the boars were scared off by something huge, like a rhino. Sarah goes and gets Jake, who questions him. In a rage, he leaves to find it and kill it. Jake takes a tranquilizer gun and some dogs back to the pump station to wait and kill it. Sarah informs Carl that the pigs have been acting weird and under more stress than usual, making them aggressive and also cannibalizing their own young.

In a small humorous part, we go back to the house with the trap, and razorback gets caught while the guy watches his tv. The beast gets angry and thrashes about, ripping off part of house with the TV and runs off into the night, leaving the man stunned.

Jake is still at the pump house waiting for the razorback, watching a herd of pigs mill around. Something is off and not right. It seems like something large is hiding behind a trough. He focuses and sees the giant hiding. “Jesus wept” is the only thing he manages to say and goes for the guns and the dogs. Jake lets the dogs loose on the herd, making the giant beast angry and it tosses the trough up into the air. He fires several shots, but nothing happens and then shoots at him with the tranq gun while it slowly walks out of view. He yells in frustration.

Jake then goes and sifts through the pond and the feces looking for clues and finds the ring that Beth was wearing, meaning for sure that she’s dead and that the boar killed her. He returns the ring to Carl and then gets Sarah to turn on the tracker so he can find it. He’s going to go back out, cause “he’s only bacon and he’s mine!”

Carl and Sarah talk. He mentions that it was their one-year anniversary, and that Beth was worried about making the trip since she was 6 weeks pregnant. Sarah apologies and leaves Carl to his thoughts. Meanwhile, Sarah tries to find the sheriff and tells the landlord at the pub that Jake is out at the pump station. She also mentions that he might know what happened to the Beth Winters woman, sparking the interest in the brothers since they’re at the bar listening to the radio communication.

Carl decides to leave in the morning since there’s nothing for him to do. He found out what he needed, and Sarah says she’ll take him to the bus station in the morning. Meanwhile, Jake is looking at a tracker to determine if the razorback is close and coming back for water. He stays the night at the pond, waiting for it to come back. The brothers show up and threaten Jake. Benny knocks him out and leaves Dicko to break his legs by hitting him with a pair of bolt-cutters. They leave him to be killed by the pigs or the Razorback. Jake wakes up and screams in pain after seeing his legs.

He crawls off to a shed to find shelter. Sarah says goodbye to Carl and drives off, but soon sees one of Jake’s dogs on the road, ran over by the brothers on their way back. Sarah rushes back to Carl and has him go with her to check on Jake. While in the shed, the razorback attacks! It breaks through the side of the shed and attacks him, mauling him and taking part of his face off.

Jake is later than found by Carl and Sarah. Carl notices that around the camp, there are marks in the ground where Jake was camping, showing that someone else was there and had killed or injured Jake.  They find what’s left of Jake and Sarah rushes off to find help in killing it. Carl realizes that the brothers are responsible for not only Jake, but also his wife, and goes after them in a rage.

Carl finds and attacks Benny, chasing him through some abandoned mines. He loses him for a moment, but then Benny hits him in the leg while trying to hide down a mine shaft. Carl grabs the lever and lowers him down the mine to find out what happens. Benny confesses about what Dicko did and that’s it’s him and the razorback.  He leaves him to his own demise and Benny falls into the mine.  Meanwhile, Sarah rounds up a posse to hunt down the razorback, but it ends up being just a little pig, and the boys head back to the pub.

We see the tracker showing the razorback heading toward the Pet Pak cannery. Dicko is finishing a shift and telling someone to finish up if they’re coming. The lights go out and he hears something in the distance. He goes back into the cannery to look around. Carl shows up, hearing something in the dark as well. Going inside and taking a look around, the place doesn’t seem to have anyone working there. Dicko comes in and tries to knock Carl into the meat chopper, but isn’t able to. His truck won’t work, so he runs off to evade capture. Carl chases him down in the truck and makes a joke that he’s a kangaroo being hunted down. While Carl is trying to shoot and kill, to which he can’t, the razorback comes smashing through some barrels and chases Dicko down a gully. Dicko tries to escape but is then cornered and eaten alive.

Carl tries to leave after hearing the screams, but then wrecks the truck. He tries to hide in the cannery, being chased by the beast. Sarah tries to call for help again, but no one listens to her. Carl then tries to fight off the beast and hears Sarah calling for him. He tries to warn her to leave, and almost gets eaten by the boar. It hears her calls and starts coming for her. Carl warns her and lets her in the cannery. We hear her screams and assume she’s been taken by the beast. Carl is then confronted by the beast and tries to run, slipping on by the broke and then stabs the beast with the pipe. In a rage, the razorback wrecks the controls for the conveyer and follows Carl onto the belt with some coaxing. Carl jumps to get out of the way and the giant boar falls into the choppers in a bloody and gruesome, but fitting death.

Carl walks through the cannery, exhausted but alive. He finds Sarah who was only knocked out and caught up in chains. They realize the nightmare is over and embrace.

Coupled with a great soundtrack and songs from the early eighties, I now love this movie and enjoy it along with other films of 1984. It’s one of our favorites to try and watch during the spooky season. And since it’s been 40 years this year (Happy 40th!), it still holds up as a great classic horror film.