Death By Video reviews Bad Taste [1987]
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Starring: Terry Potter [Ozzy] Peter O’Herne [Barry] Craig Smith [Giles] Mike Minett [Frank] and Doug Wren [Lord Crumb]
Take a New Zealander with a disturbing obsession for gore, a virtual cast of unknowns and an idea about aliens using human beings for the latest intergalactic snack, and you've got Bad Taste. Literally.
Taking his cue from Special FX wizard Tom Savini, Peter Jackson, well known now for making the Lord of the Rings trilogy, started filming his own homemade shlock gore fest with himself and friends playing pretty much every role. It took nearly four years to complete but this is the film that made Peter Jackson a creative but unusual force to be reckoned with.
The aliens are led by an opressive figure called 'Lord Crumb', who is determined to make the human race the new exotic taste sensation to sweep the solar system, Crumb plus his hoarde of scummy 3rd class labourers replicate human form and 'farm' the town of Kaihoro, the name roughly translates from native Maori language as 'fast food revealing the fate of the townsfolk. As soon as the samples are tasted, Crumb expects demand to increase and before long a small town in New Zealand won't be the only victims on his intergalactic shit-list.
The film starts with a cry for help, a vision of the Queen and a call put out for the 'The Boys'. Before long they are knee-deep in alien corpses as the kills start to mount up, in more and more unusual ways. The first being my personal favourite as a Boris Johnson-alike has his brain explode in a shower of ketchup and offal, even later being devoured by a hungry 'Robert', played by Peter Jackson himself.
Jackson ended up playing two key roles. First of all Derek, the unhinged lunatic part of the team sent to repel the alien attack by AIDS, the unfortunate acronym used for the government agency who send the team in to investigate, and Robert, Crumb's right hand man. Derek comes off as a one man army, with a bottomless napsack, a mentality for torture and an unfortunate lack of balance that leads to his near death, but despite falling head first off a cliff, he survives by saving whats left of his brains with anything nearby, making him look like a combat ready Doctor Who from the Tom Baker era. His sanity is constantly being questioned as at one point he forces alien brains into his own for no apparent reason.
You can see how it inspired others as Derek uses one unlucky alien bastard to shoot others through the stomach as this was recreated for Rodrieguez’s From Dusk until Dawn [1996]. Bad Taste still has the upper hand as Derek mimics the noises of the machine gun. Throw in some pop culture references to both Monty Python and The Beatles, with the shocked look on the face of the Paul MacCartney cut-out getting the most attention as it gets splattered with blood and intestines in Derek's modified morris minor.
Over-exaggerated action sequences punctuate the films final third, as Ozzy, Barry and Frank battle the aliens on their home turf, determined to give these intergalactic bastards the glowing middle finger and send them packing, all the while accompanied by a rocking eighties metal soundtrack.
Those looking for the purest example of a cult movie will find it in Bad Taste, and thanks to it’s influence, no one can longer make a film in New Zealand without blowing up an unsuspecting sheep. The only downside now is that the effects do look a little dated still the enthusiasm bleeds through and the comedy is still as dry and as relevant as a horror movie can be where the only agenda is nothing more than gross out horror. You will understand why Jackson was considered New Zealand's answer to Sam Raimi and The Evil Dead. Ultimately giving you the reason why this film was 'banned in Queensland' and more than likely probably still is.
I just hope that in some alternate universe, Derek stormed their home planet and used his chainsaw to turn them into the latest taste sensation. In the words of our insane hero, 'Suck my spinning steel shitheads'.... I wonder if we'll ever see a Bad Taste II?
Written by JJ.
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