Everyone knows who Peter Jackson is - he's the guy who directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Hobbit trilogy, not to mention the 2005 King Kong remake. He's one of the biggest and most successful directors in Hollywood today. But of course he didn't come from nowhere, and so today I'm taking a look at his very first feature film (which I first saw when I was around 12 and was one of the films that really sparked my interest in film and in horror specifically), Bad Taste.
A panicked call comes in from the small town of Kaihoro that all the residents of the town have disappeared and strange attackers are roaming the streets. The New Zealand government sends in the Astro Invasion and Defence Service to investigate, and Barry, Derek, Frank and Ozzy soon arrive on the scene. They find the town deserted aside from several strange men in jeans and blue shirts roaming seemingly aimlessly throughout the town, but these men are actually space aliens in disguise and they attack the team. At the same time Giles, a charity collector, arrives in the town and ends up captured by the aliens, who reveal they have come to Earth because humans are the new fast food taste sensation and they needed samples to take back before starting a wholesale operation to slaughter the entire planet. Before they leave, they also plan to treat themselves to a meal of Giles. It's up to the boys of A.I.D.S. to rescue Giles and stop the aliens from turning Earth into a giant fast food outlet...
As I said, Bad Taste was Peter Jackson's first feature-length film, made on a shoestring budget of about NZ$25,000 over the course of four years (they were only able to film on weekends for the most part, which lead to problems such as one member of the cast only being allowed to shave once a week and another one being temporarily written out of the film when he got married and couldn't work on Sundays). Towards the end of filming Jackson received an additional NZ$235,000 from the New Zealand Film Commission to finish the film, but for most of the film, it was just Jackson, his friends and his parents doing all the work. As well as directing, Jackson also produced, wrote the script (he would write the scenes weekly), did the cinematography (he built his own $15 steadycam), edited, did a lot of the special makeup effects and played three separate roles in the film. There's no denying that Bad Taste is a low-budget film because it shows in the final product, but what also shines through is the sheer amount of work and love for filmmaking that was put into the film, and that alone elevates it into the hallowed halls of "cult classic".
It's also bloody funny.
There's a clear influence from Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead in Bad Taste, with its steadycam antics, excessive gore and splatter (we'll get to that shortly) and a lot of Three Stooges-esque slapstick, to the point where I wouldn't have been surprised to have seen a "Fake Shemp" or two listed in the credits. But it's also lighter in tone than Raimi's first film (perhaps on a par with Evil Dead 2, though...) - no-one gets sexually assaulted by a tree, for example. It's definitely a horror-comedy with extra grossness.
Ah, the grossness. Bad Taste is juvenile as hell, and it gleefully revels in that fact. Some of the more stand-out moments of the film include: brains oozing and falling out of a character's head repeatedly; extreme chainsaw rebirthing; foot torture with a bayonet; someone eating brains out of the blown-apart head of another, and a scene involving vomit that is almost guaranteed to put most people off their food. Really, if you've got emetophobia or any issues with vomit, you're best skipping this film, or at least that one scene (stop watching when they bring the large glass bowl out, that's all I'm saying). The title clearly has a double meaning to it. It's aiming to gross out its audience, but also to make them laugh at the same time.
The acting is admittedly rather dodgy in places, but it's not offensively or egregiously so; it's more of a charming amateurishness than anything else. Most of the cast weren't professional actors but Peter Jackson's mates, and most of them haven't been in anything else so they can be forgiven for their slightly stilted delivery at times. It also didn't help that all the film's dialogue had to be dubbed in post-production because a lot of the film was shot on Jackson's own 16mm camera, which didn't record sound.
As I mentioned above, Jackson played two roles himself (technically three, but the third was just a voice on a telephone) - Derek and one of the alien workers, Robert. Some very clever camera work with shots filmed months apart meant that Jackson was able to film a scene where Derek tortures Robert, and while, yes, the cuts make it obvious, just the scope and determination to do that is impressive. Derek is also pretty much the chief pratfaller in Bad Taste - a bespectacled, Harry Potter (or Doctor Who) scarf-wearing, anorak-wearing character who ends up looking like Rambo if he was a birdwatcher with a traumatic brain injury by the end of the film. And it's absurdly funny, even amidst all the brains and blood and guts that fly across the screen at every opportunity.
Bad Taste managed to get itself banned in Queensland, Australia after the Queensland Film Board of Review took a dislike to a version already cut by the Australian Classification Board. This action led to the Queensland Film Board of Review being dissolved, and when the film was released on video in Australia they advertised it as being "BANNED IN QUEENSLAND". But as an example of low-budget filmmaking and of Peter Jackson's talent long before he hit the big time, it needs to be seen to be appreciated (and believed).
Finally, a quick shout-out to all my City of Heroes homies: don't the aliens in this film remind you of something?
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