Release year: 1984
Director: Russell Mulchay
Starring: Gregory Harrison, Bill Kerr, Arkie Whitely, Chris Haywood, David Argue, Judy Morris
Music: Iva Davies
Cinematography: Dean Semler
Editor: William M. Anderson
Screenplay: Everett De Roche
Producer: Hal McEllroy

There have been many great rivalries since the beginning of time: Napoleon vs. Wellington, Ali vs. Frasier, Bond vs. Blofeld, Pepsi vs. Coke, and of course Ecks vs. Sever — well, maybe that wasn’t one of the greats — but you get the idea. The list is endless. But if you happen to be in Australia, the most intense rivalry is between Melbourne and Sydney. Since, before Federation in 1901, these two cities have been slugging it out to prove which city is best culturally and sportingly. Now as Australia didn’t really have a film industry until the 1970s, such petty bickering didn’t really matter. But by the mid ’80s Australia’s film output had reached a point where ‘the rivalry’ began to permeate the film industry.

This rivalry does not mean that Sydney film-makers hate Melbourne film-makers or visa versa. But Sydney film-makers (or the Arts in general) always seemed to be on the receiving end of more generous grants from the government. Cash, coupled with a warmer climate helped make Sydney’s films always seem brighter and lighter with colour and movement. Some prominent films out of Sydney are: Muriel’s Wedding, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and Moulin Rouge!

On the other hand, Melbourne film-makers didn’t have the budgets of their Northern counterparts and therefore their films were low-key, dirtier and grittier. Some prominent films out of Melbourne are: Dogs in Space, Romper Stomper, and Chopper.

Of course this is a generalisation. Melbourne has made happy films and Sydney has made tough gritty dramas, but if you look at all the films as a whole, you’ll find that Sydney films are lighter in tone than a movie made in Melbourne. I must point out that this rivalry does not effect the actors. Actors by their very nature are a transient lot, travelling to where the work is. So Australian actors are happy to work on sunny Sydney films or morose Melbourne films.

Now let’s go back to the ’80s and two of Australia’s leading video clip makers where trying to get solid footing within the Australian film industry. One was Richard Lowenstein who as a video clip director has worked with Pete Townshend and INXS (recently he’s been working with U2). Lowenstein was from Melbourne and consequently his films are pretty gritty. Films like Strikebound, Dogs in Space, and He Died with a Felafel in his Hand, while very goods films, did not set the box office alight. The other video clip maker (almost considered a pioneer in the field) was Russell Mulcahy. Mulcahy worked with everybody – Elton John, Queen, Duran Duran, Billy Joel, Culture Club, Supertramp and The Rolling Stones, just to name a few. Mulcahy came from Sydney, and if you watch one of his films who can almost feel the sheen of gloss on the film. When I first saw Razorback I couldn’t believe it. Nowadays, with the aid of CGI, Mulcahy’s visuals may not seem like they are that special, but back then — Wow! Of course a lot of the credit should also go to cinematographer Dean Semler (Semler would go on to win an Academy Award for his work on Dances With Wolves in 1990). Visually, Razorback was the most amazing film I had ever scene.

Another point; I consider this to be Mulcahy’s cinematic debut. He did direct Derek and Clive get the Horn earlier — which in itself is an achievement of which Mr. Mulcahy should be proud of — but as that film basically consists of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sitting in a recording studio, as far as film direction goes, it is not a real stretch. Razorback was the first film where he was able to weave his magic.

As I said, I was blown away by Razorback’s visuals. I expected the film to be a runaway box-office success and Mulcahy’s career launched into the stratosphere. You see, like a mad sports fan, I was barracking for this film. In the ’80s, selling Australia to the world was like a sport. Musically we had sent bands like Men at Work, Mental as Anything and INXS off to attempt to break into the US market. Likewise, Australia was trying to do that with film. It wouldn’t be till the following year when Crocodile Dundee was released that Australian cinema made an impact overseas. Say what you like about Crocodile Dundee, but it was a very important film in its time. But back to where I was — I was barracking for this film. I had even gone to the trouble of finding the book that the story was based on by Peter Brennan. I can’t remember too much about the book now — after all that was twenty-five years ago — but it wasn’t at all like the film. I remember it being about diamond smuggling — there is a brief allusion to this excised plot where the hero of the film Carl Winters (Gregory Harrison) chases Benny baker (Chris Haywood) through the remnants of a mine field. Er, by mine I do not mean exploding mine, I mean this is a field full of mine shafts. Mounds from the diggings almost make it look like a lunar landscape. But generally the film throws all that diamond smuggling stuff out, and the film resorts to being a Jaws imitation. Or ‘Jaws on trotters’ as they now say. Regardless, I expected big things from this film.

The story for Razorback isn’t much to write home about. The film starts near the town of Gamulla in outback Australia, and Jake Cullen (Bill Kerr) is babysitting his young grandson, Scotty, at his homestead. That evening a massive boar charges through the house — through the walls and everything — like a locomotive. On its way through it collects Scotty. Cullen, who is a shooter by profession is too slow to react to the unprovoked and unforseen rampage by the beast and is helpless.

An inquest is held in Scotty’s disappearance, with Cullen put on trial on suspicion of murdering his Grandson. No-one believes the fantastical tale of a giant marauding pig. However, due to a lack of evidence, Cullen is acquitted. Over the following years Cullen is considered the town pariah — nobody likes or trusts the man, not even his daughter.

Meanwhile in the United States, television reporter and animal rights campaigner, Beth Winters (Judy Davis) is given an assignment where she is to investigate the inhumane slaughter of kangaroos in Australia. She is reluctant to take the assignment because she is three months pregnant, but her husband Carl (Gregory Harrison) convinces her to go.

Beth starts her investigation in Gamulla and in a short space of time she upsets the local population whose incomes are solely derived from Kangaroo slaughter. Two of the more colour and vocal opponents of Beth’s crusade and Dicko and Benny Baker (David Argue and Chris Haywood). The Baker Boys are two crazy sociopaths who work at the PetPak processing plant. The PetPak factory is almost presented as being a creature like the Morloch in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Really, this place is like a bloody sinuous creature.

Beth continues her crusade and on her own she makes a trip to PetPak with a camera to film the atrocities going on within the factory. The two men on duty happen to be Dicko and Benny — in fact it may only be the two Baker boys that work at the plant, as no other characters are seen to work there; but the place is huge, so it would seem strange that only two men work such a large plant. But that doesn’t really matter. Beth is discovered by Dicko, but she has time to run back to her car and make a getaway. Or so she thinks.

On the road back to Gamulla, as Beth drives back, from out of nowhere Dicko and Benny screech onto the road in their beaten up hunting wagon. They start to chase her and eventually run her off the road. The Bakers stop and Dicko goes to her car to offer assistance. But once he realises that she is okay, his personality turns, and he drags her out from the car by her hair and looks set to rape her. As Benny looks on from the wagon, the scene changes dramatically when the giant Razorback appears and charges at the wagon. Panicing, Dicko runs back to the wagon and the Bakers drive off. Beth crawls back to her car and crawls into the relative safety of the cabin. But she has no idea of what is outside and how big it is. The Razorback charges her car and with its tusks pries the door off. Then it’s dinner time for the huge beast.

Upon hearing of his wife’s death, Carl Winters comes to Australia and travels to Gamulla in search of answers. After all, they never found Beth’s body — she is missing, presumed dead. He ventures out to Gamulla and It doesn’t take him long to hook up with the Baker Boys, and while his hunt for answers moves forward, he finds that entering the Ocker-Gothic world of the Baker Boys is a bit more than he bargained for.

The best thing and the worst thing about Razorback are the Baker Boys played by Chris Haywood and David Argue. These brothers are off the planet. The positive spin on the Baker Boys is that they take this film off in to weird and wonderful directions. They are as fun to watch as they would be horrifying to encounter. Most of their scenes are improvised, and it shows. There’s a small scene inside the Baker Boys truck with Gregory Harrison’s character and they ask him if he has done any shooting in Canada. He replies that he has shot some ‘deer’. After Harrison says, ‘deer’, Argue comes back with ‘Sweetheart!’ Harrison looks confused, until Argue explains — not in these words — that ‘deer’ is a homonym of ‘dear’ and since Harrison called him ‘dear’ he called him ‘sweetheart’. Argue and Haywood’s thinking and actions are extremely lateral and off the wall.

On the negative side of that ledger, the Baker’s are so unpredictable and wild, they’re probably more scary than the actual pig, and after all the Razorback is supposed to be the star of the show. The Razorback may be a giant, rampaging killing machine but it is predictable — whereas the Baker’s aren’t. And it’s fair to say that they steal the film.

But apparently David Argue was hard to work with on set because he stayed in character which ruffled the feathers of some of the production crew. Equally some of the actors, like Bill Kerr, who comes from a classical acting background found it hard to work with Argue who would go off on tangents from what was written in the script. Over the years, Argue gained a reputation as an actor who was hard to work with and good roles didn’t really come his way. On IMDb it lists only one role in the last 10 years. As Argue’s film career wound down, he became a parody of himself. A breakfast radio team even sampled one of his tantrums, where he smashes a glass — and played it as a editorial musical cue whenever an incident happened that they didn’t like. In 1995 Argue released a book called ‘And Even The Rats Clapped’ which featured a character called Roberta Quack. But there was no need to actually read the book. Written on the cover, a spiel suggested also that the whole story could be gleaned by licking the spine of the novel. Hmmmm. There’s some weird thinking going on there! But I tried it anyway. I still don’t know what the story was about!

Russel Mulcahy did go onto bigger things after Razorback. His biggest success was most likely Highlander (even Highlander wasn’t a runaway hit when released. Word of mouth once it hit video moved the film into cult status, which resulted in the tv series and a few more sequels). These days, though, when I think of Russell Mulcahy, I think of Talos the Mummy. It is on my list of worst films ever made (right next to Detox with Sylvester Stallone). I know there are worse films out there — but usually just by looking at the cast, director and the company that released the film, you can gauge what to expect. But Talos, despite Mulcahy and a cast that included Jason Scott Lee, Honor Blackman and venerated horror icon Christopher Lee, the film is completely inept (I want that 115 minutes of my life given back!)

When Razorback came out much was made about the revolutionary new way the score was composed by Iva Davies. Davies at the time was the front man for the band Icehouse (who Mulcahy had done music videos for). The score utilised the Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument), which was the first polyphonic digital sampling synthesiser. For a while, the Fairlight was used by everyone — Duran Duran, Herbie Hancock, Brian Eno, Depeche Mode, Devo and the list goes on. The soundtrack flitters between a traditional orchestral arrangement (although performed on the Fairlight without the aid of an orchestra) and an electronic soundtrack that is very reminiscent of Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygene. Oxygene may seem like a strange inspiration for a horror film, but you’ve got to remember that Oxygene had been successfully incorporated into one of Australia’s most popular and acclaimed films of the early 1980s, Gallipoli. Like Gallipoli, Razorback has quite a few sequences set on Australian desserts, where they look almost like alien landscapes, and this moody, atmospheric futurist music enhances the visual effect.

As I mentioned earlier, I expected big things for Razorback, but they never happened. The film was a flop. A lot of the blame for this was foisted on the television show Hey Hey It’s Saturday, which (by then) was a night time variety show. The show was hosted by Daryl Sommers and his on-screen side kick was a pink ostrich named Ossie. Added to this was radio personality, voice over artist John Blackman. During the show, Blackman would make quick, often witty, asides that would take the piss out of what was happening on the show. In this instance it was a promotional piece for the film Razorback, and when a clip was played from the film, featuring Jake Cullen losing his grandson; Blackman chimed in with “Daddy, Daddy, the piggy’s gonna get me!” Everyone watching found it ferociously funny (it was a time and a place thing that I can’t replicate with words). The next day everybody had adopted the catchphrase “Daddy, Daddy, the piggy’s gonna get me!” And with those few simple words, overnight the film became a joke. Nobody went to see it.

One of the strange things about watching Razorback now on DVD is that while the print may be the widescreen theatrical version; it is cut from the version that I grew up with. Because the film wasn’t the big blockbuster that everybody hoped, when it was released on videocassette in Australia, they put back into the film some of the more violent scenes in the hope that it would attract a new audience (gotta get the kids in somehow!). This is the version that my friends and I would watch all the time. You’d be disgusted to know how many times I have watched this piece of schlock. It is weird watching the DVD as it is missing the scenes we used to love — Jake Cullen’s half chewed head all covered in worms, and a particular favourite was Dicko Baker’s death at the hands (or should that be mouth) of the giant pig. I had a friend who used to go around the school yard impersonating David Argue’s “F-f-f-fuck!” As you can tell, Razorback is more than just a film for me. It was a part of growing up in rural Australia… and like First Blood and Lone Wolf McQuade it was a ‘rights-of-passage’ film.

But that was then. Nowadays I see the film for what it is. It’s a trashy B-grade monster movie with some flashy visuals. But hey, I am from Melbourne – and after all I cannot possibly like a film made by those darn Sydneysiders.