An Introspective on Peter Jackson’s ‘Bad Taste’

by Jonathan Ng

The first time I ever watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy was somewhere towards the tail end of 2008. It was on a set of pirated DVDs from a streetside vendor across the street from the apartment I lived in at the time. I ended up purchasing a lot of movies from this guy throughout the couple of years that I lived there. He always had the weirdest movies on sale each time I went. Whether it was Star Wars Episode 7 (It was the Star Wars Christmas Special - I still have nightmares about it) or a pirated DVD for a generic action blockbuster which included the person recording getting escorted out of the theatre and interrogated by the police. The latter I unfortunately lost whilst moving. 

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was a seminal film series for me. It showed me what films could really be as a visual and auditory storytelling method. Peter Jackson and the rest of the production crew were able to take Tolkien’s work and craft the truly living and breathing world of Middle Earth, populating it with characters that felt like they were meant to be there. The stories told in each film felt like they had real stakes to them and were all building up to the apotheosis of the ring being thrown into Mount Doom. From moments such as the death of Boromir, the storming of Isengard by the Ents, and the final confrontation with Gollum at Mount Doom.

The trilogy kind of became this anchor in my life that I would return to periodically. Whenever I felt like the world around me was falling apart, I could go back to the story of a couple friends growing as people whilst their world is crumbling. Even through that fuzzy, pirated DVD screen. I could connect with the main characters on a level that no other film could.

All that said, it was certainly a surprise when I sat down and watched as Peter Jackson’s character ran over an alien in a double-decker car featuring one of the weirdest Beatles cameos I’ve ever seen in Bad Taste.

Bad Taste, released in 1987, is Jackson’s directorial debut. Before getting critical success with the 1994 psychological thriller Heavenly Creatures (Fun Fact: It features Kate Winslet in her film debut as a murdering teenager) and mainstream success with The Lord Of The Rings trilogy in the early 2000s. Jackson first came onto the New Zealand film scene with an over the top action-filled sci-fi comedy horror splatter film that relishes in being a splatter film - there is just so much blood!

Jackson presents to us the idyllic New Zealand town of Kaihoro where all the townsfolk have disappeared. Investigating the disappearance, four agents from the Astro Investigation and Defense Service (AIDS for short) are sent in. With the help of a charity collector, the agents are forced to face off against the alien force. Will they be able to keep their wits, or will the aliens turn them into delectable bites to help fuel their intergalactic fast food empire? 

With a lot of directors, their first film tends to be some attempt at a great masterpiece that tries to be philosophical or groundbreaking. But the thing is, this never happens. Most directors aren’t Shane Carruth (Primer) or Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi). Most directors end up making a film that has superficial philosophical ramblings that sound like a first-year philosophy class. These are usually films that lacks any kind of fun and insists upon itself to a sickening degree. They take themselves so seriously that anything they end up making, ends up being terrible.

Bad Taste is the kind of film that doesn’t really care about sending a message. Nor is it the kind of film that tries to be more than what it is. It understands the genres it is working in and plays to the genre’s strengths. Shot on a budget of 25000NZD over the span of four years, Jackson and friends play a multitude of characters along the backdrop of his hometown. Jackson leads us around a manic, almost drug-fueled escapade of a film and shows us things like a man having to put his brain back together before it falls out or a group of aliens having a company meeting about the logistics of shipping human meat. The film makes you feel like heart and soul were poured into it. 

To me, Bad Taste is here to have fun. Jackson isn’t taking himself seriously and why should you? 

When everyone these days takes things so seriously, shouldn’t we have fun sometimes?

All pictures are credited to Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste (1987), Image Entertainment and Traveller’s Tales’s Lego The Lord of The Rings (2012), Warner Bros. Interactive.