RAZORBACK
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.