Some films aren’t just mere films. Some films are less a matter of direction, acting and editing and more about the sheer force of will required to bring them into existence in the first place as they make you laugh, scream, cry and thrill despite the fact that figurative mountains had to be moved. Be it Spielberg battling the very elements and a penickity, pneumatic, shark to bring us Jaws or Sam Raimi defying a minuscule budget and any semblance of common scene to craft the DIY majesty of The Evil Dead, I’ve always had a soft spot for the talented, filmmaking underdog and surely one of the greatest names on the list of maniacally determined cinephiles is Peter Jackson.
Long before frequent visits to Tolkien’s Middle-Earth and five hour restorations of jamming sessions from The Beatles, Jackson and a cadre of mates gave up around four years of weekends in order to cobble together Bad Taste, one of the most awesome, low budget horror/sci-fi/comedies ever made.
The entire population of a New Zeland town named Kaihoro has vanished overnight, so four agents the Astro Investgation and Defence Service (check out that acronym) are sent to investigate. The first pair of feet on the ground are dweebish nerd Derek and the worrying, balding Barry who, while they await their colleagues, Ozzy and Frank, they are set upon by various marauding gangs of loping men dressed in identical blue shirts with stratospherically gory casualties on both sides. While an early blood bath sees these strangers weather having their heads blown off with a Magnum, skulls cracked with sledgehammers and fall foul of an innovative use for an uzi, the team eventually takes a loss when dopey Derek takes a header off a cliff only to messily splatter on the rocks below.
However, matters are made even more complicated when a young charity collector enters the town to pick up donations and unwittingly stumbles onto the bizarre happenings of Kaihoro when he’s captured and wakes soaking in a drum of secret herbs and spices. It seems that human flesh is the new taste sensation sweeping the galaxy and the blank-faced dudes who have descended on the town are actually lumpy aliens who have harvested the entire population to fulfill the orders of Lord Crumb’s Restaurant Chain. While Frank, Ozzy and Barry attempt to infiltrate their earthly base of operations to end the threat and save the charity Collector, it seems that the hapless Derek isn’t quite dead and staggers back into the fray despite having a few problems keeping his brain from spilling out. But can a bunch of dudes and a brain-damaged, chainsaw waving half-wit manage to stop a bunch of vomit drinking aliens from turning the entire human race into a fast food delicacy?
Taking the surreal, irreverent humour of Monty Python, the energy of Sam Raimi, the bloodletting of Hershel Gordon Lewis and mixing it all with a massive dollop of Kiwi can-do spirit, Peter Jackson essentially made the quintessential, home-made, gore comedy that all others would be judged by. The production values look about as good as they can do when you realise that its insanely resourceful director made a lot of the effects himself (the reason the alien’s heads have elongated skulls is to the molds would fit in his mum’s oven to be baked) and yet Bad Taste’s imagination, innovation and downright hilarious nature more than makes up for its shortcomings.
The boundless energy of the jokes are perfectly placed and range from the subtle to the insane and anyone who was surprised that Jackson not only made it to the big leagues, but actually helped change cinema, simply wasn’t paying attention. To list my favorite moments in this ninety minute, gore opus is an act of futility as it would be easier just to print the entire fucking script, but the random insanity not only includes the standard brain eating, vomit drinking and the odd exploding sheep, it also includes some staggering original gore-based puns that help it compare favourably against other, raucous, 80s epics like Re-Animator, Return Of The Living Dead and (yes) Evil Dead 1 & 2 that stuck a cheeky middle finger up at the boundaries of good taste.
The real secret behind Bad Taste’s success isn’t just that Jackson and his devoted cast and crew aren’t afraid to fling the red stuff around, it’s that it’s shot and edited in such a way that it’s genuinely witty and not just chucklsome in just a way that elicits a goose-honk of laughter for cheap thrills. The action scenes, while a tad primitive, are clear and easy to follow and it’s clear to see that its demented creator had a glorious career ahead of him.
So, about those innumerable, show stopping, moments…
Thanks to a boundless imagination an a wealth of low-fi, camera trickery that takes the Black Knight skit from Monty Python And The Holy Grail to ludicrous extremes, we’re gifted with such glorious sights as rapidly more frenzied Derek (played by Jackson himself) lurching around with the only thing stopping his brain slipping out of his cracked open skull is a belt tightened around his crown. Elsewhere we see muddled hench-alien, Robert (also played by Jackson) empty the green, steaming, contents of his stomach into a bowl while the blustering Lord Crumb and his grunting subordinates take turns in taking celebratory sips while a horrified, disguised Frank waits in line and quite possibly one of the greatest gore-gags ever put on film with the frankly incredible “born again” sequence that sees a batshit Derek use his chainsaw to dive head first through and assailant only to emerge, grinning like a looney, from its butt.
On the surface, Bad Taste makes its torturous production look effortless with rapid fire jokes with an impressive hit rate that takes in everything to extravagant slapstick to enjoyably quotable lines such as “Suck my spinning steel, shithead!” and “There’s no glowy fingers on these bastards.”, but the true wonder of Jackson’s debut lies in the fact that it’s living, gooey proof that even a hairy, geekish, New Zealander can make a movie from the ground up with practically nothing but wit, determination and fucking killer sense of humor – in fact, for more inspiration, see if you can dig out the making-of doc, Good Taste Made Bad Taste, that’s no doubt kicking about on YouTube.
If we’re keeping score (and to do so would be somewhat dickish), Jackson’s second movie, Meet The Feebles, is more subversive while his third, the epic blood-flood known as either Braindead or Dead-Alive, more polished and – if you can believe it – even more splattery; but it’s Bad Taste that’s the true achievement here, a truly inspirational gore-fest that’s even more juicy than a portion of Crumb’s Crunchy Delights and will hopeful run and run forever – even though those who know, already know: Derek’s don’t run.
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