It's "JAWS on land… on trotters" when Russell Mulcahy's RAZORBACK charges onto Blu-ray courtesy of Umbrella Entertainment and their Beyond Genres line.

Ever since a rhino-sized razorback boar made off with his grandson, pig hunter Jake Cullen (Bill Kerr, GALLIPOLI) has lived under suspicion of murder and dedicated his life to tracking down a beast no one believes exists. Two years later, New York animal activist reporter Beth Winters (Judy Morris, THE PLUMBER) travels to the Outback town of Gamulla to do a story on kangaroo hunters and quickly runs afoul of the Baker brothers – Benny (Chris Haywood, QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER) and Dicko (David Argue, BMX BANDITS) – whose Petpak cannery manufactures dog food out of kangaroo and wallaby carcasses. When her car is found torn up the next day, it is assumed that she got in an accident and then wandered off and fell down a mine shaft; however, her husband Carl (Gregory Harrison, BODY CHEMISTRY) arrives in search of answers. He is not ready to believe Jake's stories, but the older man points him in the direction of the Baker brothers who take him out on a kangaroo hunt and strand him in the middle of the Outback where he is chased by boars until an even bigger one scares them off. Carl collapses on the farm of Sarah (Arkie Whiteley, THE ROAD WARRIOR), who tracks boars humanely with electronic darts, and is nursed back to health. When he tells her about the giant boar, she alerts Jake who sets off to kill it. Having learned what really happened to his wife, Carl is ready to return home until Jake fails to return and he discovers that the Baker brothers are more involved than previously suspected.

Based on a novel by true crime journalist Peter Brennan – later producer of A CURRENT AFFAIR – and adapted by Ozploitation stalwart Everett de Roche (PATRICK), RAZORBACK is late Ozploitation that does not really feel like the genuine article. The feature debut of director Russell Mulcahy (HIGHLANDER), returning to his native Australia after making a name in the United States and England as a music video director for the likes of Duran Duran, Queen, Elton John, and Australian band Icehouse – whose vocalist Iva Davies provides the film's synthesizer score – RAZORBACK is of course patterned and JAWS but seems strip itself of anything beyond the "man versus nature" aspect, eschewing anything like character development – even in the case of the attraction between mourning Carl and plucky Sarah – or even suspenseful buildup in favor of rushing to sequences that result in Jake and Carl screaming to the heavens in pain or defiance. Mulcahy resorts to every flashy music video trick with plenty of color graduated filters, images tinted warm orange or cool blue, backlit fog through the turbine blades or venetian blinds, and various transitional wipes with Carl's hallucinatory extended walkabout in the middle of the film emblematic of this approach, altogether lacking the combination of technical proficiency and gritty imagery one associates with the Outback-set Ozploitation pics of the period. The animatronic beast – designed and constructed by Australia's premiere make-up effects man Bob McCarron (DEAD ALIVE) – is striking in close-up details but never convincing in motion, and the depiction of Gamulla as an Outback hell is better conveyed through the cartoonish performances of Haywood and Argue than the overproduced visuals of Mulcahy and DP Dean Semler (DEAD CALM). Harrison, Kerr, Morris, and Whiteley all give good performances, but they are severely limited by what seems to be a film in which scenes were thrown out during the shooting and the editing phases.

Released stateside by Warner Bros. in the R-rated version that reflected the M-rated Australian version trimmed of a mere few seconds of violence in four sequences from the original Australian R 18 classification cut which nevertheless ended up on VHS in that country, American fans of RAZORBACK had to contend either with the panned-and-scanned VHS or letterboxed Japanese laserdisc while the film started popping up in European territories on anamorphic DVD. When the film finally had its domestic digital debut in 2009, it was a barebones DVD-R as part of the Warner Archive line (with no Blu-ray upgrade in sight). Australia's Umbrella Entertainment previously issued region free DVD and Blu-ray editions, but the former was a 1080i encode that ran shorter due to the 25fps speed of the transfer. Their Beyond Genres edition is also region free but is derived from a new 4K remaster and encoded as 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen. The colors are highly saturated, leaning heavily towards warm skintones and sweltering daylights and dusks and cool neon blues spiked by the infernal reds of the Petpak plant. Contrasts are high and it is possible the colors may have been digitally boosted, but the highlights do not blow out as they did on the DVD transfer. The transfer cannot be accused of looking "naturalistic" but this is more likely due to the choices of Mulcahy and Semler in the photography and color timing. As with the previous Blu-ray, Umbrella have dropped the 2.0 rendition of the Dolby Stereo soundtrack in favor of the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track but remix suits the aggressive sound design from boar grunts to directional scares and rear channel noises while the dialogue remains intelligible. Optional English SDH subtitles are also included.

New to the Beyond Genres edition is an audio commentary by director Mulcahy with moderator Shayne Armstrong in which the director reveals that his Duran Duran video for "Hungry Like the Wolf" video got the attention of producer Hal McElroy (PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK) and that the Outback was as alien to him as a Sydney boy and having been away from Australia for six years working on music videos in the US and UK. He accepted the opportunity to direct a feature based on the "killer pig" description without reading de Roche's script and concedes an inexperience at the time for working with actors, although he speaks warmly of the cast, particularly Kerr and Harrison (with Armstrong chiming in about the original casting choice of Jeff Bridges which was vetoed by McElroy who did not see him as a star). They also discuss the shoot in Broken Hill which was the go-to location for the Outback where Semler had previously shot MAD MAX, as well as the cinema taboo of killing children, and the malfunctions of the razorback creation (with Mulcahy noting that Elton John saw a preview cut and described the charging version of the beast as "Rocket Pig").

The feature transfer is the film's theatrical cut (94:50), but – whereas previous DVD releases included the few bits of cut gore as deleted scenes from VHS tape – this disc includes the VHS Cut (95:00) in its entirety upscaled to 1080p at 24fps in pillarboxed 1.33:1 pan-and-scan with the exception of semi-letterboxed credits. The "grisly deleted scenes" (2:24) are also offered separately with optional commentary by director Russell Mulcahy with moderator Shayne Armstrong, consisting of an elongated version of Beth's death in which the objectionable material was not bloodshed but the "phallic suggestiveness" of the tusks between her legs (which Mulcahy admits was inspired by the scene in ALIEN in which Veronica Cartwright was menaced by the alien's tail), a face-ripping death and the aftermath as discovered by Carl and Sarah (which remains offscreen in the theatrical cut), another character's leg crunched in the mouth of the beast and spitting up blood, and Carl getting an additional faceful of blood during the climax.

Also ported over from the DVD and previous Blu-ray is an audio interview with actor Harrison from his website (30:56) in which he recalls being in Australia to promote TRAPPER JOHN when his agent told him to meet the McElroy brothers. He liked the script and the opportunities to surf in Adelaide on breaks, and also recalls his previous experiences with razorbacks growing up on Catalina Island as well as the erratic functioning of the razorback animatronics and puppetry. "Jaws on Trotters: The Making of RAZORBACK" documentary (73:43) is a documentary with the input of Mulcahy, McElroy, effects artist McCarron, composer Davies, as well as actors Haywood and Morris. Mulcahy and McElroy rehash the origins of the project, the others discuss Mulcahy's visual imagination – with Davies contrasting his direction of music videos versus narrative film with actors, and they recall working with Harrison, Semler, Kerr, and Argue – the latter two's differing acting styles clashed during the shoot – and the early death of Whiteley from cancer.