Razorback (1984): adapted by Everett De Roche from the novel by Peter Brennan; directed by Russell Mulcahy; starring Gregory Harrison (Carl Winters), Arkie Whiteley (Sarah), Judy Morris (Beth Winters), Bill Kerr (Jake), Chris Haywood (Benny Baker), and David Argue (Dicko Baker): Absolutely bonkers Australian horror movie from director Russell Mulcahy, best known for the first Highlander movie.
Australian Gregory Harrison plays a grieving Canadian husband who travels to Australia to discover what happened to his American eco-activist wife. She disappeared in the Outback. Why? Well, it's really no spoiler to say that there's a giant boar (the Razorback of the title) rampaging around, killing people and smashing things. How big? Minivan big.
The movie's first scene sets the bar pretty high for crazy events and fast-paced action. The rest of the movie isn't that good, but it's pretty good. Harrison even has a surreal vision sequence while he's wandering the Outback. While it's set in the present, Razorback portrays rural Australia as one big Mad Max wonderland. It's marvelous, giant-monster fun. Recommended.
Cargo (2017): written by Yolanda Ramke; directed by Yolanda Ramke and Ben Howling; starring Martin Freeman (Andy), Anthony Hayes (Vic), and Simone Landers (Thoomi): One of those Netflix movies whose lack of a theatrical appearance baffles the viewer. It's a zombie-plague movie set in Australia with fine performances from Martin Freeman and Simone Landers. Landers is especially good as Thoomi, the 11-year-old aboriginal girl whom Freeman meets in the countryside at a dire moment.
The plague has been around long enough that "countdown watches" are available to those recently bitten, giving a 48-hour count to the point at which a person will zombify. Freeman has been bitten as the movie begins. But in the depopulated countryside of Australia, he needs to find someone to take charge of his young daughter Rosie, the cutest 1-year-old girl ever to appear in a zombie movie.
Thoomi has her own trauma to deal with. The film-makers handle the growing friendship between the two delicately. It helps that Freeman's default acting mode is a sort of baffled, affable humanity. Thoomi is understandably cautious around him, but Rosie The World's Cutest Baby eventually wins her over.
There isn't a ton of violence in Cargo, though there is some zombie-fighting action (and human vs. human action, these catastrophic zombie events never bringing out the best in humanity). Cargo does hold out hope, though, in the manner of some of George Romero's genre-defining zombie classics. I shed a manly tear or two at the end. Recommended.
