SnoReptilePlenty
Memorable, crazy movie
Plustown
A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
Claire Dunne
One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
jamesgandrew
Peter Jackson is now known as an Oscar winning director for his great efforts on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. However, Peter Jackson didn't always produce high budget epics. He started with low budget films, the first of which was the 1987 horror comedy Bad Taste.The story features a group of boys who have to stop evil aliens from harvesting people into food. It's a simple premise done with a low budget and loads and loads of gore. The film is so gory I wouldn't recommend this film for the squeamish. However, if you're like me you'll be laughing at how over the top the violence gets at points. It's not realistic in the slightest and that's why it's so appealing.Peter Jackson had a hard time selling the splatter movie to the New Zealand Film Commission but he managed and now it's become a cult hit. This film combines horror, action and comedy into a consistently entertaining film. You can clearly tell Peter Jackson and his friends had a blast making Bad Taste and the energy and passion is all evident on screen. Bad Taste definitely lives up the title, it's gross and ridiculously funny at the same time. It was a great start for a filmmaker who went onto bigger things… but I'll always have a soft spot for his schlocky yet fun low budget films.
Dalbert Pringle
Let's face it - When it comes to its hilarious, old school, grind-gore effects (that are really quite over-the-top and need to be seen to be believed), Bad Taste is a small-scale "Alien Invasion" picture that would have, otherwise, been forgotten long ago and dismissed as pure rubbish without them.With so much going against it (terrible dialogue, dumb situations, badly-staged violence, incompetent direction, predictable story), 1987's Bad Taste would be Peter Jackson's first feature film as a director and, with that, it, unfortunately, showed his amateur status clearly at this very early stage in his career.All-in-all - The appropriately titled "Bad Taste" was at least worth a few honest-to-goodness belly-laughs. The absolute highlight of its z-grade hilarity was the priceless moment when the aliens' asses were exposed to the viewer. Talk about funny! Set in the remote, New Zealand town of Kiahoro, Bad Taste was produced on a shoe-string budget of just 200,000 NZ dollars.Besides not giving a sweet-damn about the fate of any of the characters in the story, this viewer also thought that the film's rock & roll soundtrack stank, big-time.Oh, well - What the heck, eh? I still thought that its cheesy effects were a lot of fun to watch.
popcorninhell
I've always respected and admired Kiwi director Peter Jackson and his grand designs. While some of his films are somewhat overrated (I take particular issue with The Frighteners (1996)), I could always appreciate his vision. When I decided to take on Meet the Feebles (1989) earlier this month I was taken aback by just how clever the man was when he first started making waves in schlocky horror movies business.Bad Taste (1987) was the director's first full-length film shot on a minuscule budget of just $30,000 New Zealand Dollars or just over $25,000 American. To put that into perspective Kevin Smith's Cannes Film Festival winner Clerks (1994) had a budget of $230,000. That's a paltry amount in comparison to the average multi-million dollar budget of a summer blockbuster. Yet while Bad Taste can't compare to the flip-flap of the Hollywood glitter machine, for what it was at the time and still is, Bad Taste isn't...terrible.A group of wannabe commandos discovers the dastardly plan of a particularly nasty group of aliens. Vanishing the entire town of Kaihoro (which translates to Foodtown in Maori), the aliens plan on taking the morbid, bloodied mounds of flesh back to their home planet. The ultimate goal; turn them into meat for their fast food franchise. It's now up to Ozzy (Terry Potter), Barry (Pete O'Herne), Derek (Peter Jackson) and Frank (Mike Minett) to put a stop to their plan before they expand to other parts of the island, and maybe the world!On the face of it, Bad Taste plays like a lesser version of The Evil Dead Trilogy (1981-1992) made memorable by its exotic island location. The Ocean is never far from the action and the flora of New Zealand's northern island makes for something nice to look at when the camera-work becomes stilted. The dialogue edges just north of bland and there's something to be said about the sound mixing which is out of synch in places.Still, no one watches a movie like Bad Taste to read lips and Peter Jackson's script requires a lot of running, hiding, physical confrontations, gunfire and blood gushing. Jackson himself has the majority of the memorable scenes; most involving attempts to stop his brains from leaking out the back of his head. He and his friends also double for Blue shirted aliens disguised as humans. They're dispatched in clever and often over-the-top ways in the tradition of Nobuo Nakagawa.Fans of blood, guts and gore will no doubt enjoy Bad Taste as it is indeed an exercise in bad taste. Yet even to the casual viewer Peter Jackson's freshman project has something to offer. The all male cast achieves a sense of camaraderie without needlessly focusing on things like character development. Also the acting isn't completely horrid, just amateurish.Finally to all the potential filmmakers out there who fear rejection due to lack of talent I say take a look back and watch Bad Taste. You'd be surprised how far a man like Peter Jackson has gotten. For that matter watch the maiden voyages of other brilliant directors like Martin Scorsese's short film The Big Shave (1968), Rian Johnson's Evil Demon Golfball from Hell!!! (1996) or Stanley Kubrick's Fear and Desire (1953). Talent isn't something you're born with but something you earn through practice. In the case of Jackson's story about fast food loving aliens, consider Bad Taste a work in progress.http://www.theyservepopcorninhell.blogspot.com
PassPopcorn
I sometimes jokingly remark how Peter Jackson's career was perfect until he directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's hard to imagine that this director, who now specializes in big budget Hollywood movies, started off by creating twisted and gory low budget movies – his directorial debut, Bad Taste, being the prime example of this early, strange phase. Bad Taste was by no means an easy experience for Jackson, since the filming took 4 years. However, the hard work paid off and Bad Taste can be used as a valuable lesson in "do-it-yourself: low budget film making". It's amazing how, in spite of rather limited resources, Jackson managed to make it all work and look good – he created the masks and firearm replicas for the movie himself. He even constructed his own counterweighted steady-cam. Bad Taste is a definite must see for every aspiring movie maker, if only for Peter Jackson's creativity.The movie follows 4 agents (called 'The Boys') of some sort of secret service, who investigate alien activity in a small town. Apparently, the aliens have killed the whole population and replaced it. Things become more complicated when the aliens kidnap a charity collector passing through, and it's up to The Boys to save him, by using any means necessary. As you can see, Bad Taste's plot is fairly simple, there isn't much "story" to it – the movie is mainly action and dialogue driven. Due to this fact, the movie gets boring from time to time and I find it to be the worst from Peter Jackson's early phase. I also find it to be the least funny one. While there are quite a few amusing scenes, it doesn't even come close to other early classics like Braindead and Meet the Feebles. But at least there is enough violence and gore in it to make it interesting. The movie does get pretty graphic. Did you first notice the guy missing the top of his head or the Peter Jackson cameo?The effects in the movie (influenced by the cult special effects artist Tom Savini) are surely its best quality. You'll see heads exploding, limbs being torn off and even some chainsaw action. The scene which impressed me the most was the one where a character, played by Peter Jackson, fights with another character – also played by Peter Jackson. Actually, if you're not informed prior to the watching of movie, you may not notice he plays two different characters since they don't really look alike. Who knows – maybe Jackson has an acting talent waiting to be further developed? Speaking of acting, the actors did an OK job for this kind of movie, no one is laughably bad. On a side note, I think it's important to remark that all of the dialogue was dubbed in post production; that, however, isn't much of a bother since it isn't very apparent.While I wasn't really keen on Bad Taste (like I said – I found it to be somewhat boring and I prefer other early Jackson works) I would definitely recommend it to everyone. It's a gory, funny trash/cult flick about some guys fighting off a bunch of butt shaped aliens, set to an 80s heavy metal soundtrack. Why wouldn't you watch it?Rating: 6/10 Read more at http://passpopcorn.wordpress.com/
