Pig Hunt

Year of Release: 2008
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 4.8 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Admittedly when I started watching a movie that involved a hunting party being slowly killed and eaten by a giant pig, I had my reservations and doubts and thought that it could either work out really well and be amazing or go really badly and make me wish the pig was slowly eating me by the time I got to the end of it. Thankfully the movie turned out to be a lot of fun but in a very different way to what I was anticipating. The man-eating pig actually has a relatively small part to play in the movie’s action and what we have instead is a Deliverance-ish type movie with a horror movie’s edge to round it off in a blanket of tastiness and gore.

Sergeant McStud at your service ma'am!

We begin our tale of bacony deliciousness with young and attractive couple John and Brooks who awaken from a night sweet, sweet love-making. At least this is what I think happened since, as soon as he stands up, we get an ass shot from John and some lacy bra action from Brooks. John’s getting ready for a boys weekend with friends Ben (the black friend), Wayne (the Indian friend) and Quincy (the Stoner and presumably gay friend) while Brooks (the Asian girlfriend) decides to tag along to give it all a slightly feminine touch. With bags packed and every racial group covered the friends set out into the woods to John’s late uncle’s ranch where they can spend a fun weekend camping, drinking beer, shooting animals and feeling manly and rugged. En route they encounter a group of hippies that have the dangerous combination of being high as kites and armed to the teeth and a group of red neck lunatics living up the track from the ranch they’ll be camping at. The house itself is an absolute disaster with animal skeletons all over the floor and writing in blood all over the walls. Between the lunatics outside and somewhat creepy state of things inside most other people would start to feel a little uneasy, but not our gang. They came to have a boy’s weekend and by God they’re gonna have one!

We have found the fabled Naked Lake the ancients spoke of...

Having spent night in tents and John and Brooks enjoying another night of sweet, sweet love-making (this time brought about by discussing how animals bleed when you shoot them) the two love birds are awoken by two greasy red necks climbing into the tent with them. Thankfully these two, Jake and Ricky, know John from back-in-the-day when he was still growing up and living with his uncle and just felt like popping in to say hi. Once everyone is dressed, had coffee and sniffed some kind of drug Jake and Ricky decide to join the others on their pig-hunting expedition. To warm up and help the bonding process along they first shoot a baby deer with a bullet that explodes on impact and blows a hole in the side of the poor creature’s body. This is followed by some target practice on beer cans and, after discovering that Brooks is an amazing shot, the group is ready to get on with the real hunting. Having found an ideal spot they use a whistle that sounds like a wounded bird to summon the hogs who come charging at a terrific speed. Unfortunately they come charging right at Wayne’s leg and shatter his knee, leaving him unable to move. To distract them from this sad turn of events they discover a field of weed where Jake and Ricky start stuffing the goods into black bags. Unimpressed by this John and Ricky get into a heated argument that ends with Ben shooting Ricky. Jake then runs off to get the rest of his clan and exact his revenge while John, Ben and Quincy run back to get Brooks and Wayne and try to make their escape.

Unfortunately the pig was too stingy to go to the doctor and have his eye checked...

It’s at this point that things take a turn for the worst. Having summoned the clan to go out and avenge the death of Ricky the group needs to decide on what the best course of action is to take. Wayne’s disappeared and John, an ex-soldier who recently served in Iraq, is unwilling to leave his friend behind to face either red necks or killer pork products. John and Brooks decide that they will try to find Wayne while Ben and Quincy try to make it back to the house fast enough to get the car and try to reach help before the clan reaches them. Of course the house is the first place the clan thinks to visit and they manage to catch Ben and Quincy just as they are trying to leave. While the two of them try to make their escape John and Brooks seem to be having a little more luck when they come across the hippie they met at the very beginning of the movie who offers to take them back to his commune for safety. After all, how much harm could one muscular black man with a machete and a harem of stoned, gorgeous females do?

The pig will eventually make his main appearance towards the end and when he does he’s quite a sight to behold. If you’re in the mood for a movie that is just gory enough to be entertaining and just intelligent enough to make you think about what’s going on then I definitely recommend Pig Hunt.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• You don’t have to inspect an old abandoned house in the woods before staying there for a weekend. Just rock up and hope for the best.
• Women are instantly aroused by gory hunting stories.
• Growing weed is more profitable than raising emus.
• Meat is not the same thing as a dead animal.
• Pigs swallow human hands whole.
• Deep in the forest there exists an oasis full of naked women.
• An army of red necks can be summoned, armed and mobilised in less than 30 seconds.

PIG HUNT TRAILER

Squeal

Year of Release: 2008
Genre:  Horror
IMDB Rating: 4.2 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium

WHAT ITS ABOUT:

To be fair, let me start this review off on a positive note. In a flooded market like the horror genre, many movies are simply bad rehashes of other movies that were done much better on a bigger budget with far better actors. In amongst all of the rehashes this movie stands out in that there aren’t many films out there that feature a family of pig-human hybrids (with characters like these now falling into a sub-genre that fans have dubbed ‘Hogsploitation’). That said, this movie still has various layers of terrible upon which it has been built and that is why it has found itself a home in my collection of horrible horrors.

Squeal briefly starts off with yet another bunch of cooky scientists going about their day trying to play God. The audience isn’t told why they’re doing what they’re doing, but someone in the group clearly felt that the world is somehow incomplete without a group of pig-humans in it. Unfortunately, like many mad scientists, this lot simply did not realise that, in a complete circle of life, your genetic experiments inevitably land up jumping off the operating table when you fail to secure them properly and land up killing you, which our little Piggies do in this time-honoured tradition.

These little Piggies remind me in a way of affirmative action: not quite human enough to get a regular day-job and not quite pig enough to simply live it up in a sty, our Piggies have instead built themselves a sty house. Thankfully they also seem to have access to TV and have seen The Hills Have Eyes because these Piggies are clever and know how to set traps to catch their food, as one unfortunate motorist finds out in the final bit of secondary-story before the main plot-line decides to kick in. Ethical questions abound with this kind of hunting: as a pig-human hybrid, does eating normal humans make you a cannibal or only a semi-cannibal? What if the victim ate bacon before he left home to be murdered? But I digress. Time to move onto the main storyline.

Our (main) story begins with a band of musicians, their uptight manager and two sexually-insatiable groupies heading off to perform at a gig. As any good band knows, you need to let the already stupid driver get completely stoned out of his mind as he is driving if you want this “tour” to be successful. What follows is a very drawn-out driving sequence interspliced with beer drinking, misogynistic insults and groupies who need to be restrained in order to keep their tops on. With these kind of events and this kind of acting, it actually comes as a relief when one of the Piggies hops out into the road, forcing the van into a ditch and leaving it unable to drive. So Lead Band Member, Disgruntled Manager and Dumb Driver head off to look for help while Other Band Member and Horny Groupy #1 and Horny Groupy #2 stay in the van.

Following the crash the audience is thrown into is a series of murders, kidnappings and never-ending chase scenes as our family of Piggies, Daddy Pig, Mommy Pig and their child (I think the technical term is a ‘kidlet’) systematically kidnap, imprison and kill the members of our touring band using a mixture of brute strength, pitch forks, cleavers and guitars. The members of the band never know what’s going to happen next, mainly owing to the fact that the Piggies communicate through a series of grunts and oinks that spell out their very doom.

In closing, when you have a movie centered on Piggies with the tag-line ‘A Twisted Tail of Horror’ that tries to take itself seriously, you know you’re in for a rough ride.

THINGS I’VE LEARNED:

• Kidlets just want to be pretty and wear makeup.
• Piggies REALLY don’t like to be disturbed when they’re watching their favourite shows.
• Mommy Piggies get very jealous when their husbands look at normal human females.
• Kidlets are far more effective killers than their parents when armed with two kitchen knives.
• Hanging meat in a humid, dirty room is the best way to preserve it.
• Piggies can magically appear in an open field where there was nothing a moment before.
• Throwing your cellphone into a field guarantees that you will be killed by a Piggy.
• Daddy Piggies are voyeurs and like to watch the human mating ritual before imprisoning them in a sty.