Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Pig Hunt'

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:

“Pig Hunt”

Like “Deliverance” but without the banjos and the literary pedigree, “Pig Hunt” (due out on DVD Tuesday) charts a testosterone-fueled trek into hillbilly country that’s complicated by pot-growing sirens, a mysterious hippie and a killer, 3,000-pound black boar.

Wearing its low-budget B-movie pedigree with pride, this hybrid action-horror flick sports an above-average cast headed by Travis Aaron Wade, Tina Huang and Trevor Bullock, with musical support and a funny cameo as a backwoods preacher by Primus bassist Les Claypool.

The tale charts a trip by a group of San Francisco buddies to a remote norther California ranch to hunt wild pigs. As the hunters trudge deeper into the woods, their idyll is interrupted by encounters with the violent and unpredictable Tibbs Brothers, a machete-toting hippie stranger, vengeful rednecks and throat-slitting Cult Girls who grow dope by day and worship a giant killer pig by night. Naturally, the climax of the hunters’ trek is a showdown with that monstrous pig, The Ripper, a murderous porker with a taste for human bacon.

“Pig Hunt” is rated R for strong bloody violence and gore, drug content, sexuality, nudity and language. It runs 100 minutes and is being released by Phase 4 Films.

- Dennis King