Pigs



Ever since Zambrini’s pigs escaped their pen one night and stumbled upon some hapless drifter that they apparently thought looked delicious, the animals have developed a taste for human flesh. So now the rural diner owner has been digging up human corpses from the cemetery and feeding their remains to the pigs. Enter Lynn Webster, a young woman with a mysterious past who comes by the diner looking for a job. Zambrini gives her the job, along with a room to stay in, without really asking her any questions. Truthfully he has his own past and doesn’t really care. He just wants her to stay away from the pigs out back. But Lynn ends up bringing along her own issues, which Zambrini quickly finds out after he finds the corpse of the creep who’s been hitting on her in her bed, and Lynn in an almost catatonic state. No matter though. That just means more chow for the pigs. But when the police start to investigate and a private investigator shows up looking for Lynn, Zambrini realizes that this is going to be more than just a one-off incident.


Not even close.

Okay, so, right off the bat I think it only fair to warn people who see that title and poster up there that, no, this is not a movie about a group of man eating, killer swine that go around devouring people and causing bloody havoc. I’m sure something like that exists out there somewhere – though what that might be eludes me – but this is not that film. In fact, the pigs themselves actually play a very small role in the film, almost to the point where they feel like an afterthought. Instead, the movie is actually more of a psychological horror centered around the character of Lynn and all of her very sad and fucked up issues. Though how much the movie focuses on those issues sorta depends on what version of the film you’re watching. Because of course the small, cheap little grindhouse film that you likely never heard of before inexplicably has more than one cut for you to worry about.


Curse you stupid grindhouse films for forcing me to look shit up.

Alright, apologies in advance if this at all becomes any way confusing. So the movie was originally released in ‘73 by writer/director Marc Lawrence, as a vehicle for his daughter Toni Lawrence. Toni basically did jack all after this, but you might recognize Marc. He had a long career in Hollywood playing gangsters and thugs, and was prominent in a couple of James Bond films. Anyway, after the initial release he sold the rights to the film and the poor movie was re-titled over a dozen damn times to things like: The 13th Pig, Blood Pen, Horror Farm, Roadside Torture Chamber, The Killer, The Killers, Lynn Hart, and The Secret of Lynn Hart. But there were really only two main edits done to the original film that you need to worry about. The first was done around ‘74 to capitalize on the success of The Exorcist, and included throwing a Lynn look-alike on a table and adding an exorcism scene to the beginning of the movie…and then never mentioning anything about exorcism or possession in the movie ever again. You’ll know which ones those are, since those versions have “Exorcism” somewhere in the title. The second was done in ‘77, where they took the original and added a prologue and epilogue to the film centered around Lynn to further flesh out her story (Daddy’s Girl). And then those elements were shortened again in ‘84, when the movie was re-released and re-titled yet again as Daddy’s Deadly Darling. Which just so happens to be the version of the film I watched, despite it showing up under the title Pigs on the streaming service. All of which seems like WAY too much effort to put into a cheap, exploitative, grindhouse flick, but maybe that’s just me. Other than that though, the movie remains largely the same. And thank goodness for that because the bulk of the movie really has enough of its own problems without having to worry about new ones added in post.


Note: if you can’t clearly see the actress, odds are the scene was added later.

First though, I will admit that there are parts of the movie that are surprisingly decent. The acting for instance, is a lot better than you’d expect from a creepy little drive-in picture such as this. There are ups and downs of course, as Toni’s skill and believability sort of fluctuates all over the bloody place. But overall she’s pretty good, and she handles the “loss of sanity” scenes very well and comes across as a very sympathetic character. Also, Marc and the rest of the supporting cast make up for any of her faults, and it kinda evens out.


This is actually a pretty good scene.

Even the gore and blood effects aren’t too bad, especially considering what kind of film this is. It isn’t what you’d consider great, what with the budget constraints and all, but a lot of people do end up getting stabbed and chopped up in this movie. And some of the gorehounds may be amused to note that some of the fake “limbs” that are fed to the pigs are actually molded bead that director Marc Lawrence baked himself before production. Which…. I don’t think I’ve seen that before. But I will admit that if anything like that were ever offered for sale I’d be mightily tempted to buy a loaf of foot or forearm from the grocery store every Halloween.




Hmmm…hand kneaded dirt bread. Yum.

The skin fans, meanwhile, will likely not be nearly as impressed, because the most they’ll get out of this is a couple of shots of Lynn laying around in some very busty nightwear. But that’s to be expected I suppose, since her father was the director and all. Considering some of the content of the film, shooting your kid doing a nude/sex scene would have been profoundly creepy on several levels.


So no, no boobies. This is as close as you get.

No, instead the film’s issues lie just about everywhere else. The music is horribly repetitive. I think they only had maybe three songs to work with, so you end up hearing them over and over and OVER again. So that’s not fun. The editing is also annoyingly choppy. And yeah, part of that can be blamed on the fact that the beginning and end of the version I watched were added to the film later on. And man, you can really tell in a couple of those parts because the (annoying) song they’re playing abruptly cuts out during a car driving scene and then cuts back in when that same scene picks up again a couple minutes later. But the middle of the film suffers from a lot of herky-jerky jump cuts too, so you really can’t fully blame the editing issues solely on any of the newer additions.

Really though, the main issue with the film is that parts of the plot don’t feel like they were properly thought through, or even fleshed out. For instance there’s this entire subplot that involves a couple of Zambrini’s neighbors making complaints about his pigs. Which makes sense, because those things are loud and annoying as all hell, and I swear the filmmakers must have recorded the sounds of a couple of them experiencing explosive diarrhea or getting slaughtered or something, because some of those noises are absolutely atrocious. But the weird thing is that the neighbors are also making claims that every time Zambrini feeds someone to the pigs, that then that person… somehow then gets turned into a pig? Like… Okay? And at first the claim is very subtle and you just think the ladies are just old and looney-toonie, but then they quickly drop a line about it again later on, and then a doctor mentions something about ancient Egyptian beliefs regarding pigs and sacrifice, and then at the end, depending on which version of the film you happen to be watching, we find out at the end that Lynn was wearing an ankh necklace the whole time and that the police may or may not have found an extra pig in Zambrini’s pig pen. And it’s just like… Excuse me? What the flippity hell does ANY of that have to do with the rest of the movie, which is centered around murder and Lynn’s disturbing and destructive daddy issues? Because absolutely NONE of that “extra pig” weirdness is ever explained or elaborated upon by the end. They just drop those dollops of supernatural nonsense on the viewer like it’s perfectly normal, and then forget about them. It’s like there was a whole ass-load more of movie planned that they just gave up on part way through. But then left other parts of it in for funsies. And of course the version I watched makes all of that pig-people silliness absolutely pointless, because in that version Lynn is shown to be perfectly fine at the end. I’m…. I’m just horribly confused, is all. That’s what I am. And now once I’m done with writing this I have to go look up Ancient Egyptians and their relationship to pigs, because I’m pretty sure all that mumbo jumbo was total horse-hockey. Thanks a lot, movie.



Plot annoyances aside though, I thought Pigs wasn’t all that bad for a cheap grindhouse, drive-in feature. In fact some parts, like how Lynn exhibits her psychosis or her bond with Zambrini, were actually done very well. Yeah it has most of the issues you’d expect to see from a low-budget exploitation flick, what with the sound and visual issues coupled with the slow and sometimes odd plot. But overall I thought it was a pretty good, cheap little psychological horror film. At the very least it kept me engaged enough to care where it was going. So if exploitation or psychological horror are your bread and butter, and you don’t mind films with a grungy, low-budget feel, then this one might interest you. But if you’re looking for that elusive crazed, killer, man-eating pig movie, then I’m afraid this movie is going to let you down.

Pigs is available on a variety of streaming services in various states of quality.

Pigs is also available on Bluray.

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