Director Russell Mulcahy of ‘Highlander’ fame directed this tale of a
giant man-eating boar running rampage through the Australian outback, and
whilst it obviously borrows a lot from the true life case of the child who
was eaten by a dingo, it is surprisingly good.
When Jake Cullen’s grandchild is eaten by a giant razorback, he is accused
of murder, as he has no proof that there was ever an attack on his home.
Jake decides to take matters into his own hands and spends his every
waking moment trying to track the wild beast down and kill it.
Meanwhile animal rights journalist Beth Winters and her cameraman travel
to the Australian outback to do a report on the culling of Kangaroos. The
duo are immediately made unwelcome and face all sorts of trouble from the
locals which culminates in the attempted rape of the pregnant journalist
and ultimately her death at the tusks of the razorback.
Enter Beth’s husband Carl who will stop at nothing to find out the truth
of his wife’s demise.
The only problems I have with this film are down to characterisation.
Certain characters motives or choices leave a lot of unanswered questions,
as they continuously do the dumbest things, and whilst there are answers
there if you look hard enough, it still asks a lot of the viewer to
believe it totally.
The cast who are largely Australian and unknown, all do a good job but
again we have to question the believeability of their intentions as some
characters seem to evolve totally within minutes of appearing on
screen.
The film showcases a great use of scenery and lighting and Russell Mulcahy
very wisely keeps the razorback hidden in the shadows allowing only brief
glimpses of it, however this makes it no less scary as the sound effects
and clever camerawork really make the boar attack scenes work.
OVERALL SUMMARY
This film is largely unheard of and quite hard to find, but is
nevertheless quite impressive and is definitely one of the better
creatures on a rampage films.