
WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
So, this article was supposed to be longer, with the usual 6 films instead of 4! Unfortunately I was unable to get hold of Chaw, which I was really interested in as it is a South Korean horror film, and Hogzilla. This is one of the phobias that I don’t really understand because I don’t find pigs scary at all – but then again, it’s called an irrational fear for a reason, I guess. Also, it is a little disturbing that a pig will basically eat whatever is put in front of it…
Pig Hunt
How is it that just the echoing sounds of what I assume to be pig grunts at the beginning of this can be just as chilling as the T-Rex roar at the end of Jurassic Park? This is your classic story of the predator becoming the prey and I’ll say this much, some of the hunting group deserve what’s coming to them. Typical me that the only one I feel genuinely sorry for is Wolfgang the dog! I had assumed based on the dog-tags that the scene we open with actually takes place later in the film but it seems that I was wrong. We actually don’t see the “killer pig” that much throughout the film until right at the end – just a few smaller pigs here and there. Between the local hillbillies and the pigs, the final half an hour is absolute carnage. There is also a rather dark reveal towards end.
Wild Boar
Normally when I say a film has a weird opening, it’s usually weird in a gruesome or violent way. However, this time because it opened with a stop-motion animation of why the pigs we are going to meet are the way they are – I actually thought I had started watching the wrong film. This film has the perfect set up for a horror as the main group are isolated in the desert unaware of the mutated pigs. The problem with this film for me, outside of the reasonably cheesy acting, is that when we first meet the pigs – they remind me of the sand people from Star Wars! The main story here is one of survival, trying to avoid being eaten in a world where humans are on the pigs menu instead of the other way around. I’ll be honest though, for a “pig horror” and you actually don’t see them that often. I also don’t like the fact that at the end, we cut back to a freeze frame of the group before they go into the hole with a voice over of an earlier line; “Wait haven’t any of you seen a movie.” It almost makes me think that none of what we see was actually real.
Pig Killer
If you have ever seen the film Snatch you’ll be aware that you should “never trust a man who owns a pig farm”…and it seems this film does not prove it wrong – especially at the beginning. Now, I know the title makes it sound like it’s about a killer of pigs but this is not the case. Technically, none of the pigs that Piggy owns (yes, Jake Bucey’s character prefers to be referred to as Piggy) do the killing but when he kills Brenda, it’s almost like his main pig Balthazar is goading him to do it! I don’t think any word describes this film better than DISTURBING and it definitely is not the kind of role I ever expected to see Jake Bucey take on. Outside of his character and potentially Wendy, other parts of this film and other characters do come across a little bit cheesy. Especially with the overly loud music in places. The reason Piggy is killing these women reminds me a little of Carrie in a way because of the way her mother is such a religious fanatic and talks about breasts as dirty pillows.
Razorback
Interestingly, much like Boar – a pig horror I covered in a previous article – this film is set in Australia. This has unbelievably dark opening in the fact that it seems the razorback boar, as far as we are to believe, takes a young boy of no more than 3 years old! Strangely, the razorback actually starts out as a little bit of an anti-hero in a way as even though there’s the incident with the boy it seems to stop the rape of Beth Winters but then again, it seems to be saving her for itself. We actually see very little of the boar, plus Benny and Dicko are weirdly creepier than it anyway. Especially when you see where they live! Much like Wild Boar, this film has the perfect setting as it takes place in the Australian Outback but added to that it also hits that fear of the unknown because you never see the razorback kill anyone – they just seem to disappear. Because of this, some people may not consider this as a horror film nowadays but I can see how this would have scared people in the ‘80s.