The Making Of Bad Taste
A four-year shoot, one ton of offal, hardly any money, and absolutely no hobbits - revisiting the creation of a cult classic and the making of Peter Jackson.
Wellington, New Zealand, 1983. Young Peter Jackson is standing over a scorching oven. Upon opening the door, the 22-year-old pulls out not a tasty, high-fat treat, but a rubber mask. It may be grotesque but it’s baked to perfection. Across the kitchen, Peter’s parents scowl at their only offspring. With their son having commandeered the cooker, it’s another cold dinner for Bill and Joan Jackson. Peter, however, is oblivious to his parents’ hunger pangs. After all, his rubber masks are merely part of a larger recipe he’s been working on since he was knee-high to a hobbit.
It’s hard to imagine now but there was a time when Peter Jackson wasn’t the multi-millionaire creator of one of the most successful film series of all time. Back in 1983, he was just plain old Pete Jackson, fantasy-obsessed only child. Way back then, Jackson was still dreaming about making movies. The films he aspired to shoot weren’t sagas based on celebrated texts, though. No, the movie the younger Jackson set out to make was an alien invasion comedy peppered with Python-esque humour and soaked in gore. It’s name? Bad Taste!
To those unfamiliar with the stomach-turning splatter-fest, it’s hard to convey just how repellent Jackson’s feature debut is. When extra-terrestrials invade a small New Zealand fishing village (a refreshing change from California, the destination of 95% of all movie aliens), the Kiwi government summons its crack defence force The Boys - four none-too-bright men led by the redoubtable Derek (Jackson himself) - to scupper the invaders’ plan to serve man-flesh in their intergalactic fast-food restaurants.
It sounds simple enough but it’s actually incredibly messy, thanks to all manner of cheap-but-astonishing special effects and a surfeit of sheep brains. Gory in a way very few films are, Bad Taste is also very funny. And while it clearly owes a debt to George A Romero’s cheap-as-chips zombie movies, it’s proved influential in its own right, shaping films as diverse as The Blair Witch Project and Jackson’s own Lord Of The Rings saga. It’s troubled four-year shoot, meanwhile, explains why orchestrating the battle of Helm’s Deep was as easy as ABC for Peter Jackson.
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