You want to know how old I am? I can remember when Blockbuster Video was The Next Big Thing. It was a monolithic blue titan of a company that was gobbling up mom-and-pop video stores in whatever town it landed in. Think of Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son.”
Yes … I realize that the meme below is now a bit dated, as today Netflix is infamously suffering its own problems. It’s still funny, though.
I remember getting excited about seeing “Day of the Triffids” (1962) for the first time. It was the early 2000’s, and the advent of DVD-by-mail services enabled me to hunt down all the various apocalyptic sci-fi movies I’d heard about as a kid — including a few that I’d only seen portions of, because I’d tuned in late. (The local video stores I’d grown up with had some of these films, but not all — and my interest in the sub-genre was truly exhaustive.)
“Day of the Triffids” was mildly disappointing. It was positively lethargic for an end-of-the-world monster tale, even if those monsters were slow-moving plants. (It’s a good bet that John Wyndham’s 1951 source novel did a better job with the story concept.)
I ordered this DVD through Blockbuster Video. Here’s a little movie industry trivia for you — Blockbuster briefly had a DVD-by-mail offer that was better than the one pioneered by Netflix. (You actually got more movies out of it, and you got them quicker.) But this was around the end of the prior decade; Netflix had already won the war for the home movie market, while Blockbuster was suffering its first location-closing death rattles. And the DVD-by-mail business model was itself becoming largely obsolete, anyway — the twin threats of Redbox kiosks and online movies saw to that.
Legit question for rural Australians — how do I kill the 30 to 50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3 to 5 mins while my small kids play?
If you’re anything like me, you’re endlessly regaled by all the viral jokes this past week referencing “30 to 50 feral hogs.” (And if you’re nothing like me, then you’re an intelligent adult and I congratulate you. But you can google the new trope, which I have paraphrased above, if you want to. It is the very height of preposterous predatory animal political humor.)
The jokes made me remember this little disappointment from the 1980’s — the Aussies’ own feral hog horror movie, 1984’s somewhat lethargic “Razorback.” If memory serves, I rented this sometime around 1986, I suppose. I got it on VHS from my nearest shopping center’s sole mom-and-pop video store, before Blockbuster Video’s invasion reached my area.
There are people out there who fondly remember “Razorback.” You can find some nice compliments about it over at Rotten Tomatoes. People enjoy its “atmosphere.” People like Gregory Harrison a lot.
I didn’t like it. Sure, it had a pretty neat electronic score that seemed trippy and cool to me as a young high school student. But that was its only redeeming quality. It started off with its depressing plot setup, which you can see in the first video below — the titular wild boar absconds with a baby boy. (The boar also thoughtfully burns the child’s house down as it departs, to underscore that fact that it is an asshole.)
The rest of the movie is boring, because it’s yet another one of those monster movies where you never get to see much of the monster — right up until the movie’s poorly lit climax, which takes place in a slaughterhouse, I think? Which is supposed to be ironic or something? Don’t quote me on this stuff; 1986 was a long time ago. For comparison, think of the legion zombie “thrillers” always available on Netflix where the zombies are always outside, and the movie just follows the indoors arguments among three very-much-alive people inside a windowless warehouse. I want to invoke the inevitable “wild bore movie” pun, but I’m holding back, because my friends tell me that they have enough of that sort of thing.
I used my own money to rent “Razorback,” probably earned from either my confusing stint at McDonald’s (they just didn’t get me there) or my summer job cleaning boats and lobster traps. (I lived on an island, people.) I remember being slightly disgruntled that I’d wasted my hard-earned cash.
Honestly, though, I was a credulous kid when it came to a movie’s marketing. When I read the back of the VHS boxes, I took things at face value. I also had my heart set on something called “The Alien’s Deadly Spawn” (1983), which I realize now was just a no-budget early mockbuster ripping off Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (1979). (It was always out. I finally caught snatches of it on Youtube this past spring, and it looks pretty unwatchable.)
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 