Christy by Request — Razorback

“Razorback” had so much potential. It’s a grungy ’80s exploitation film about a ravenous boar rampaging across the Australian outback, devouring anyone who has the misfortune of being in its path.

I’d never seen (or even heard of) this unabashed B-movie before it came up this past weekend as the latest random Christy by Request title, the suggestion of a Twitter follower in New York City who goes by the name Santito567 (@SaAponte). Its wild premise certainly held promise for a night of cheesy, gory fun — and in sporadic spurts, it does deliver. Too often, though, director Russell Mulcahy’s pacing is frustratingly languid. His 1984 film is enormously stylish in a fashion that’s very of its time — more on that in a minute — with bursts of violence that are indeed intense. But I kept waiting for “Razorback” to be more insane. It isn’t as nutty as it could have been, and it certainly isn’t as nutty as its description suggests.

Mulcahy’s film has style for days, though. That much is clear from the very beginning. The Australian filmmaker was also a prolific music video director who was responsible for some of the most iconic clips of the era, including several for Duran Duran’s biggest hits (“Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Rio,” “Save a Prayer” and my favorite of their songs, “Is There Something I Should Know?”), Spandau Ballet’s “True,” Kim Carnes’ “Bette Davis Eyes,” Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” which famously was the first video MTV ever played. Just thinking back to the look and feel of those videos should give you an idea of the prevailing aesthetic in “Razorback.”

The movie manages to be both grimy and glossy at once. Every sensation is heightened in a way that’s simultaneously beautiful and brutal. Orange, apocalyptic skies blanket the windy plain. Everything is choked in dust and smoke. A porch swing creaks ominously. The thrum of blades spinning on a solitary windmill adds to the feeling of isolation. We are in the middle of nowhere and there is no one to save us. And yet, there’s plenty of dry ice to create a steamy mood and neo-noir lighting to showcase a character’s blue eyes or juicy lips.

Mulcahy — who would go on to direct “Highlander” and the sequel “Highlander II: The Quickening” — wisely refrains from showing us the creature in all its hairy, hungry glory for a while. As Steven Spielberg did so masterfully in “Jaws,” Mulcahy teases us with a glimpse here and there as the animal picks off his initial victims one by one. They include a towheaded 2-year-old boy, whose grandfather (Bill Kerr) had just put him down to sleep for the night in his crib. All we see is a flash of noise and chaos, and suddenly, the entire house is ablaze. Kerr’s character, a weathered outdoorsman named Jake, is assumed to be the killer, a stigma that haunts him for the rest of his life (or at least the rest of the movie).

Two years later, American investigative reporter Beth Winters (Judy Morris) goes missing nearby while working on a piece about the hunting of Australian wildlife. Her husband, the impossibly bland Carl (Gregory Harrison), travels to this remote region to find out what happened to her, but he winds up getting caught up in the freakshow of drunk, toothless locals and their pursuit of the mythological boar. Harrison was at the height of his “Trapper John, M.D.” fame at this point, but he has zero charisma. Granted, there’s not much to his character; he’s our everyman conduit into this wild world, giving everyone else room to chew the scenery (no pun intended). But he’s painfully stiff here, and it’s really hard to care about whether or not he gets eaten, too. (Everett De Roche wrote the script, based on the novel by Peter Brennan.)

Carl frequently wanders the outback in a state that might be literal, or it might be a hallucination, given that Mulcahy renders the terrain in lurid shades of pink and orange, then blue and green. He also ventures into a kinda-sorta, too-soon romance with Sarah (Arkie Whiteley), one of the rare locals who stuck by Jake and believed in him after he was accused of murder. With her perky dimples and trendy, off-the-shoulder sweatshirts, Sarah doesn’t get to do much aside from being sweet and supportive. And whatever supposed connection she has with Carl just feels like filler until the pig comes.

And oh yes, the pig does come, often prompting the obsessed Jake to wail and cry to the open skies, with blasts of the synth-heavy score from Iva Davies providing amusingly melodramatic accompaniment. Working with veteran cinematographer Dean Semler — who won an Oscar for “Dances With Wolves” and also shot “The Road Warrior” and “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,” among many other films — Mulcahy has fun with the piggy POV shots. They’re wobbly and low-angle, punctuated with plenty of snorting and grunting.

Details like that suggest the kind of crazy fun “Razorback” might have been the entire way through, if only it had been daring enough to go whole-hog.