The 3 Killer Pigs (film): A bit of 80's slasher nostalgia wrapped up in a stupid story

One thing I remember vividly about the 80's was the rise of popularity in horror slasher films. These films for the most part were not very good and I don't think they were ever intended to be.

They normally had very little budget with a lot of creativity mixed in by absolute necessity. Then, to sweeten the pot they would get some aspiring actresses to get their clothes off for a scene where it was basically guaranteed that the lovely young thing was going to get viciously murdered just to prove that our wandering killers do not discriminate on looks and have zero interest in how pretty someone is when it comes to murder.

The stories for a vast majority of the 80's films were very forgettable and dumb, and 3 Killer Pigs encapsulates all of this perfectly.

src

One of the things that I have been enjoying about this latest wave of slasher movies is that a lot of them are tying in old nursery stories or folklore tales, hell, even famous Disney cartoons and interweaving that into a poorly contrived and absurd story about how our titular characters came to want to murder everyone in their path.

3 Killer Pigs does not disappoint in this aspect of things, because the reason for "Straw, Sticks, and Brick", yes, you read that right, that is their names, decide to murder everyone is because something bad happens to their human caretaker and well, I guess they are really upset about that to the point of indiscriminately killing anyone that they encounter. They don't really seem to have much other objective.

This begs the question of "how did the farmer have 3 murderous pigs that walk on 2 legs on his property for so long without anyone finding out" and you just need to take those sorts of stupid-ass questions out of your mind if you are going to try to enjoy this movie.

src

I bet that they had a lot of fun making this even though I would bet that most of them were paid very little if anything at all to be in it. The pigs themselves are very clearly middle-sized humans with a mask on but who cares right? The director attempts to sidestep this budgetary misfortune by shaking the camera a lot - which is a tactic I despise but in situations like this one can forgive.

src

They don't have any actual nudity in this film but they do get really close. Like thong underpants and soapy bathtub close and I'm not perving out because I know how to find boobs on the internet. I am applauding them for doing this because this was one of the main reasons why kids in the 80's really really really wanted to see the latest slasher movie. It was guaranteed that some hapless 20 something was going to get her goods out for the camera - then get killed.

Ultimately, The 3 Killer Pigs commits well to the nonsense

That's one of my favorite comments I saw out there because yes, this film is 90 minutes of absolute nonsense. The acting is pretty terrible too but I can't imagine how much money they would have had, not very much, that's for sure.

src

"Oh I wonder if she is going to strip down to almost nothing and then be in a very vulnerable position right before getting stabbed with a pitchfork?"

LOL, it's predictable, funny, and also kind of impressive how they pull this off with an undisclosed, but almost certainly very small, amount of money. I can't find any details about how much they had, I don't need to. The film kind of speaks for itself.

The film starts out with a story of revenge of sorts but then just kind of spirals to indiscriminate killing but let's be honest here, I wasn't watching this film because I thought the screenplay would be Oscar-worthy.

Should I watch it?

while I seriously enjoyed this I will recognize that this is entirely because I come from a time period when this genre was established or perhaps even invented. I recall looking at VHS boxes in video rental stores and getting excited just because of the box art.

Make no mistake though, this is not a great film for people that don't have an appreciation for gore, low-budget cinema, or a general interest in nonsensical slasher films.

I realize this is a very niche audience but for me this one was a lot of fun, bad acting and all.

_{This movie can only be legally streamed at the moment by renting it for $5 or so. There are a lot of sources but the more popular ones are Amazon and AppleTV+}