Editorials
‘Razorback’: A Beautiful, Brutal Eco-Horror from Down Under [Horrors Elsewhere]
Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.
Global infatuation with all things Australia was still under way when Russell Mulcahy unleashed a 1984 movie described as “Jaws on land.” The music-video director’s first feature came out toward the end of Australia’s New Wave era, and like other “Ozploitation” films before it, Razorback paints the outback as a lawless, unforgiving territory. This time, however, danger comes in the form of a giant, insatiable boar hiding in the continent’s treacherous backyard.
Lindsay Chamberlain’s highly publicized, 1980 case is the inspiration behind the movie’s brutal opening. The mother was vacationing in Uluru when her nine-week-old daughter was abducted, and after being convicted of a crime she blamed on a dingo, Chamberlain was later exonerated. Meanwhile, Razorback reimagines the real-life story; kangaroo hunter Jake Cullen (Bill Kerr) is babysitting when the film’s force of nature plows through his home and snatches his grandson, Scotty. Jake is brought up on charges for the boy’s disappearance, but he is ultimately acquitted due to a lack of evidence. Now the town pariah who believes a man-eating, rhino-sized razorback is roaming the area, Jake sets out to clear his name and avenge his grandchild.
Razorback attempts to do for boars what Jaws did for sharks. While Steven Spielberg cast a dark and permanent shadow on the shark’s reputation, Mulcahy’s movie requires more effort when convincing audiences these boars are nothing like Arnold Ziffel or Wilbur. The denizens of this overstated version of the outback are also skeptical toward the idea of a killer razorback. So to better grease the wheels and assure everyone wild hogs can be dangerous, the story immediately establishes no one is safe from the monster. By killing a baby at the film’s start instead of a hapless swimmer or teenage camper, Razorback makes its threat clear. The most innocent victim imaginable is executed with no hesitation. Even without visual confirmation of the infant’s death, Jake’s anguished, desperate howls are proof enough Scotty is long lost.
The bestial antagonists in movies like Razorback often have a symbolic role when they are not killing out of hunger or territorialism. Many analyses of Jaws see the great white as not only a menace to beachgoers but also capitalism. The boar has a similar reading; it stands in the way of Pet Pak, a pet food factory. Before reaching that point, though, the factory’s initial foil is an American reporter and animal rights campaigner named Beth Winters (Judy Morris). Leaving behind her husband Carl (Gregory Harrison) in New York, Beth heads to the outback to investigate the goings-on at Pet Pak.
Morris slips into the role of a do-gooder whose substantial love of animals outweighs her sense of self-preservation. She hopes to get the scoop on Pet Pak’s shady practices like illegally harvesting kangaroos to make dog food, but her rogue methods land her directly in harm’s way. Sadistic goons from the factory — one of whom helped discredit Jake at his trial — chase Beth down in the outback, try to rape her, and then leave her alone with the ravenous razorback. Idealists are not always rewarded in horror, and Beth is no exception to this unwritten rule. As it turns out, her horrifying death serves a higher purpose.
After Beth gets the Marion Crane treatment, husband Carl steps into the protagonist’s shoes. Razorback feels almost like a different movie from here on out, but this narrative curveball is in line with the source material; the novel by Peter Brennan has multiple subplots overlapping one another. Everett De Roche’s screenplay trims the book’s fat — the entire thread about diamond smuggling is cut out — and adds more razorback action. Before the climactic conclusion comes, Carl first seeks answers from Jake as well as the Pet Pak punks responsible for Beth’s fatal run-in with the boar.
Although it might feel like a mid-film lull, Carl’s protracted journey to closure is not without its benefits. Mulcahy’s history in music videos is transparent all throughout the second act. He and cinematographer Dean Semler draw beauty from a place not always thought of as beautiful in Ozploitation; the outback’s loveliness comes out in spite of its arid climate and precarious geography. Gorgeous, abnormally colored landscapes and uncanny light sources make up some of the more striking visuals here. On top of that are the frightful, Dali-like mirages and hallucinations that do more to illustrate Carl’s state of weariness and grief than dialogue ever could.
Mulcahy’s film is both a testament to the size of the outback — only a region as big and sparsely populated as this could hide such a prodigious animal in plain sight — and an aggressive reminder of mankind’s place in the world. The more people encroach on nature, the more it retaliates. The razorback is one example of how an ecosystem corrects the imbalance; it chooses an agent to remove the poison. The true monster winds up being the American company using Australia’s natural resources and depriving the boar of kangaroos. The razorback would not have to seek out food elsewhere had it not been for Pet Pak. As much as Razorback roots itself in reality without succumbing to unearthly measures, there is a debatable air of magic to the events within. A workable theory has the beast acting on the outback’s hopes and fears, and maybe Beth’s spirit is somehow adding fuel to the fire. Nothing on screen explicitly supports a mystical angle, but in the same vein as Princess Mononoke, the environment finds other means of delaying the inevitable destruction brought on by humans.
Nature’s nightmare is reflected darkly through the razorback’s burning, merciless eyes, and audiences will have trouble looking away. There was a time when Mulcahy’s film was dismissed as too imitative or too oddball, but now it is seen in a whole new light. The story hosts a modest cache of nuance, and the visual output is tremendous. Most of all, buried beneath the ecological dread and creature mayhem is a visual poem about the outback, which has never looked so equally surreal and stark.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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