Midnight Movie Madness: Pig Hunt

“Pig Hunt” – (100 minutes, USA 2008, rated R)

Woof. What a week. And a half. Starting a new job, in a different industry has thrown me off my game somewhat, and here I am apologizing to our fantastic readers for this late review.
The Midnight Movie Madness shall continue! But now on weekends instead of Wednesdays. Ah well, working in service industries (is there anything else left?) has taught me to grovel.
Have I got a good one for you, now…? I developed an inclination for this movie as soon as I saw that Les Claypool not only did the score, but appears in a small role, as a vengeful hillbilly wearing a priest’s collar and a Stetson. We like the funk here at JBoD, and Claypool’s so funky he was turned down by Metallica when he auditioned with them in the 80’s. Their loss and probably a good thing as he went on to front Primus. The man is not only an extremely talented musician, he is local, born in Richmond California, across the bridge from us.
“Pig hunt” might not be everybody’s cup of tea, particularly people unfamiliar with California. It seems to cram a lot, too much color, too much weird…. But this is California! The movie has a plethora of strange characters from weird hippies carrying Kukri knives (they HAVE to draw blood once they are unsheathed), to crazed rednecks, not to mention the odd group of friends going to these here parts near Boonville (in Beautiful Mendocino county) from San Francisco.

Watch the trailer:

See, here’s the thing: the woods really are that beautiful. Trails lined with ferns and wild mushrooms, tree trunks covered in bright green moss, many, many places so magical you wouldn’t really be surprised to see a unicorn rounding the corner of a volcanic rock outcropping.
But then, there was this one time, in Lake county maybe 19 years ago. I was camping out with friends and one late afternoon as it was getting dark, we missed a turn in the hills. We stopped the truck to look at the map when a huge Dobermann ran up to the driver side window barking his head off. That was startling enough, but then some slightly misshappen guy showed up carrying a double barrel shotgun. He looked at us hard for a minute before hissing (he actually was missing top and bottom front teeth): “don’t ever come back here again…”
Okay, then… Back in town at the local supermarket, I remember folks that looked like they was straight out of “pig hunt”, yes siree. “Pig hunt” definitely brought back memories. Flashbacks, even.
Even the “eclectic”, I know I said “odd”, group of friends makes some kind of sense. The Iraq war vet John (Travis Aaron Wade), his girlfriend Brooks (Tina Huang) who turns out to be a better shot than the guys, the cook, the wannabe soldier, all of them kind of belong. Hey, it’s the Bay Area.
There actually isn’t much for the actors to work with, in terms of script/dialogue, which makes the performances actually more impressive. Some of the leads have television experience, yet they managed to avoid most of the pitfalls which afflict TV pros, like running your hand through your hair to express excitement or stress, or the halting breath speech. Travis Aaron Wade may well turn out to be someone to watch and so is Tina Huang. They are very watchable and not given to overacting.
You only get to see the Ripper, the 3000 pounds killer pig at the end, but hey, like Elizabeth Taylor, he is famous enough to make a late arrival. “Pig hunt” is wild, kinetic and actually nice to look at.

It gets 4 jellybeans.

And now, for something different. Here is Les Claypool and Primus performing “Over the Falls”.