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Razorback
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Razorback was much derided at the time of its initial release as a ludicrously implausible (yawn), blatantly market-oriented (you don’t say!) attempt to follow in the tyre tracks of the first two Mad Max instalments, not to mention a hundred other horror-thriller hits. Yet Russell Mulcahy’s debut feature (after an already prolific career in music video) stands up pretty well today, where many more ‘respectable’ Australian films do not. Showcasing an impressively busy, textured style (IMDb informs us that his auteurist trademark is to “frequently incorporate water as a design element”!), Razorback also draws upon numerous, intriguing national-cultural obsessions – including the Azaria Chamberlain case, resentment of imperialist USA, and the figure of the true-blue Ocker as total outback savage. The hand of ace genre-screenwriter Everett De Roche (1946-2014) is evident. Razorback can be both enjoyed and pondered at length. Meaghan Morris, for instance, included close consideration of it in her landmark 1987 essay on Crocodile Dundee (1986). Mulcahy (now 71), beginning with his subsequent Highlander in 1986, launched himself into a colourful, international career mostly keyed to a few popular genres (horror, thriller, fantasy, and teen TV series); I particularly appreciated his take on The Shadow (1994). In my mind, I sometimes confuse him with (or substitute him for) another Australian-bred director who came up from DIY origins and transited through several horror franchises to hit the plateau of such material as The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004) and the TV series 24 (2001-2017): Stephen Hopkins. Razorback, unlike so many other Australian films (bad or good, high or low) of the ‘80s, has never entirely disappeared from the voracious optic of cult-movie aficionados. Most recently, the hip American critic Nick Pinkerton, with his newfound love for all things Australian, has re-hitched (16 years on from the documentary Not Quite Hollywood) the Ozploitation wagon train, vaunting Mulcahy’s film in an essay for Metrograph theatre/journal titled “The Pig was Cool”. Need I say more? MORE Mulcahy: Resurrection MORE De Roche: Long Weekend, Windrider, Visitors © Adrian Martin August 1990 / September 2024 |
