Bad Taste (1987)

Produced, written, and directed by Peter Jackson
Starring
- Terry Potter
- Pete O’Herne
- Craig Smith
- Mike Minett
- Peter Jackson

“Another Bad Taste review?” you moan. “Jeez, aren’t there enough of these all over the Internet? From the way reviews and tribute pages and fanpages pop up all over dedicated to this movie, you’d think the World Wide Web was created solely to promote Peter Jackson. And you think the world needs another Bad Taste review?”

That’s right. So shut up and take it like a man.

Because this is the kind of movie that Cold Fusion Video Reviews was created to explore: completely indefensible but wholly enjoyable fare. Movies that were made in, yes, bad taste, but which managed to become thoroughly delicious cinematic junk food. So stop your whining, or I’ll mix some more metaphors.

The plot is almost too simplistic to be called that: The New Zealand government’s bumbling four man anti-alien department, the Astro-Investigation and Defense Service, stumbles onto the wholesale slaughter of the small town of Kaihoro by an alien horde. And not just any aliens — capitalist aliens! Alien entrepreneurs! Interstellar bastards who plan to promote human flesh as the latest fast-food taste sensation, under the banner of Crumm’s Crunchy Delights!

And what transpires on screen is lunacy of a magnitude not seen since Monty Python’s The Holy Grail.

By sheer dint of the hats he wears simultaneously, Peter Jackson qualifies for the moniker “filmmaker” — he wrote, directed, produced and starred (in two separate roles) in his first film here. But he also qualifies for the label “comic genius” with the way he manages to translate the Looney Toons-style humor of complete exaggeration into live-action. Granted, Looney Toons were never this gory, but the inspiration is still completely visible. Bad Taste belongs on the same video shelf as Ren and Stimpy.

For example: We have a bunch of the dimwitted “3rd class aliens” (Jackson’s friends, dressed in identical jeans and work shirts) using one of their number as a live battering ram; said ram doesn’t seem to mind.

For example: Poor Derek (Jackson), the nerdiest of the AIDS boys, ends up on the wrong end of a cliff. But is he dead? No, he just managed to crack the back of his skull apart, with the result that his brains keep falling out at inopportune times, forcing Derek to don the tightest hat he can find.

For example: An alien trying to knock Derek down said cliff raises a sledgehammer. Derek shoots his shoulder, so that the hammer swings all the way back — into a fellow alien’s cranium. A few more bullets cause the shoulder to detach completely, which leaves us with one alien missing an arm and one alien with a sledgehammer sticking from his head — with an arm still attached to the end.

For example: Hapless donations collector Giles is captured to be used for the aliens’ celebratory feast. He wakes up from a blow to the head — to find himself naked in a huge pot of herbs and spices, with an apple in his mouth. (How much more blatant a cartoon reference do you want?)

I could go on with examples — the “clowns from the volkswagen” reference, the different-sized hammers, the vomit-eating scene, the exploding sheep, the sheer cartooniness of the Old Alien Bastard’s face — but I’d end up describing every scene of the entire movie.

On top of the inspired lunacy, I must also laud Peter Jackson’s technical accomplishments. Somehow, he manages to make effects that shouldn’t work, work. Some incredible miniatures work is presented in the use of a rocket launcher on the house in which the aliens are revelling; it was only on my second viewing that I finally said, “Hey, wait, they couldn’t have afforded to blow up half a house!” And the sound design — holy cow, the sound effects make the movie; they’re what turn bits of raw chicken meat into believable brain matter.

Lest this sound too much like fanboy blathering (what? No, it’s NOT too late!), I will point out that most of the second half of the movie is taken up with an interminable assault on, and firefight with, the aliens, and even the many more moments of cartoony beauty can’t keep it from dragging a bit.

But it still ranks as one of the best movies to come out of the ’80s, and gave us a director who’s probably the only person who possible could pull off a Lord of the Rings adaptation. (Not that he will — I’m reserving judgement until I see the finished project — but I don’t think anyone else even had a rat’s chance of doing it right.)

Given that Bad Taste is finally coming again on video (after a too-lengthy absence), I cannot but recommend that you add this gem to your collection.