Kaiju History: 40 Years Ago, Ozploitation Director Russell Mulcahy Made His Best Movie Not Called ‘Highlander’ Or ‘The Shadow’ – And It Stars A Giant Killer Pig
When one thinks of a kaiju, the mind usually goes right to Godzilla, King Kong, one of their foes, or Gamera, if you are one of the real discerning connoisseurs. However, the definition is a bit broader than anyone likes to admit. In the most basic classification, a kaiju is a monster, but more literally, the term means “strange beast.” Although it has become synonymous with the gigantic variety, that designation belongs to Daikaiju, and that’s technically what Godzilla, Kong, and Gamera really are.
Even their sizes have varied over the years – and sometimes between frames – but now that you know some of the word’s subtler, more arcane etymology, you can understand that almost any ghastly creature can be a kaiju. Moreover, when it comes to giants, they don’t have to be comparable to skyscrapers. Giant monsters or kaijus can technically be any abnormally large organism.
Jaws counts, if only to a degree, as a monstrous great white you don’t see every day. Cinema’s most famous shark is practically the standard for the low end of “Kaiju.” No kaiju has been imitated with ripoffs more than Kong and Godzilla, but Jaws (based on the criteria laid out above) has to be up there with them in that regard. Since 1975, there has been no shortage around the world of giant shark knockoffs or variations on the concept that insert another sea monster – giant squid, giant octopus, killer whale, schools of bloodthirsty piranha, et al.
Several films even tried to bring the formula to land using the firmament’s most feared or mysterious animals. Post-Jaws, the most memorable examples included Grizzly in 1976 and The White Buffalo in 1977. Though each of those is inventive in its own way, and the latter boasts Charles Bronson, reviews for them are mixed to say the least. They didn’t impress upon release and have only middling cult followings. More than that, they didn’t have a visionary director with a visual style that could push genre boundaries.
That’s one thing that helped the 1984 Australian monster movie Razorback stand out from the pack. It also rode the wave of the Ozploitation craze that took the world by storm, starting with Mad Max, and turned the likes of Peter Weir and George Miller into top, in-demand directors. Highlander director Russell Mulcahy fell into that category early in his career, and contrary to popular belief, a giant pig put him on the map, not dueling immortals.
Mulcahy made the jump from music videos after working with just about every musical heavyweight of his day to adapt a book by American writer and TV newsmagazine producer Peter Brennan as his first fictional feature. The story follows the husband (Gregory Harrison) of a New York journalist (Judy Morris) who disappears in the Outback due to foul play by some locals and the appetite of the voracious title beast, which doesn’t wait to charge in and do damage.
The beginning, like Jaws, sets the tone for what Mulcahy delivers with Razorback visually and auditorily before the title card even appears. In a reenactment ripped from the headlines, trapper Jake Cullen (Bill Kerr) puts his grandson to bed before investigating suspicious noises. As if shot out of a cannon, the pig rams through Jake’s entire house, leaving a path of destruction and accidentally dragging his grandkid off into the night, never to be seen again.
Cut to Jake being put on trial for murder and acquitted for lack of evidence, though the townsfolk don’t believe a piggo ate his baby. A pariah, Jake now lives for nothing but the mission of finding and killing the monster that ruined his life, and blasting the sh-t out of little razorbacks along the way (it really brightens his day). His path soon crosses with Gregory Harrison, and Jake leads him on the animal’s trail littered with blood and guts, most of which you don’t see.
Mulcahy leaned heavily into the R-rated reputation Ozploitation earned and graphically captured every attack and devouring by the pig. However, most audiences weren’t treated to the gore to appease censors and secure more commercial ratings everywhere. Therefore, domestically and internationally, explicit gore had to be cut, including from death scenes that were more gruesome in the dailies.
Some of the footage was restored as bonus footage on home video releases. Razorback is available on DVD and Blu-ray around the world. In the last few years, it has received the 4K and HD treatments in special editions with loads of extras for fans, such as the illuminating feature-length making-of documentary Jaws on Trotters: The Making of ‘Razorback’ featuring interviews with cast and crew.
The title of the doc is a nod to the way the movie was pitched, which was much more unique to cinemas at the time. Trotters are a reference to the big boar’s hoofs. The entire anatomy of the creature was a technical marvel and was done completely practical. Special effects artist Bob McCarron was the wiz behind the design. He has worked on everything from Dead Alive to The Matrix, but in the mid-80s, he was known for his work on The Road Warrior, and that got him the job on Razorback.
To bring the beast to life, McCarron and his department were tasked with building six different models, a few of which were on wheels and designed to ram through structures and into vehicles. A significant portion of the $5 million budget was allotted for a fully functioning animatronic, but the thing barely worked and is only seen in a few shots. For wide, faraway shots, an actual domestic pig wearing a costume was used. This was a clever idea that came with headaches when the animal ran off over a hill into the Outback and took days to hunt down.
They almost lost the plot on the pig in the movie, also. As filming was wrapping up, they were still finishing the script and hadn’t cracked one thing: how the beast must die! In the end, they went with the standby cliche of a showdown in an abandoned warehouse between the hogzilla and Harrison. The monster is impaled on a pole, which it barely registers, and is ultimately lured to its death onto the conveyor belt of a giant industrial meat grinder.
After that, the film was in the can, and it got an international release, albeit a limited one that didn’t exactly rake in the dough or have everyone singing Mulcahy’s praises yet. Critics were not fond of it either, but public opinion would turn as Razorback gained a following on VHS. It was a staple of every video store I frequented, featuring prominently in the horror aisles. If you walked by it, chances are you knew on some level you were looking at a modern classic.
That rep seems to have cooled in the last few decades as much as Russell Mulcahy’s career, but the Internet being what it is, almost every horror and sci-fi YouTube channel is doing their best to help new generations catch this killer boar and be stunned by its killer visuals.
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