Bad Taste (1987)

It was late April of 2020, the COVID-19 lockdown had just been lifted (although, to be honest, it shouldn't have), and I was desperate to get out and do something. So, I headed to Chattanooga and, more specifically, McKay's, having not been there since that January. I didn't have much money or much of anything to trade in, but I didn't really care, as long as I was out of the house. I was browsing the horror section, which I frequent every time I go there, and was shocked when I saw the old 2001 Anchor Bay DVD of Bad Taste on the shelf, as I knew it was long out of print and quite expensive. It just goes to show how you never know what you're going to find at McKay's, and for a reasonable price, as well. Obviously, I had known for a long time what Bad Taste was (since I was 14, when I read about it in The Horror Movie Survival Guide) but had never seen it. However, I had seen a couple other of Peter Jackson's early movies, Dead Alive and The Frighteners, and enjoyed them both, so I was more than willing to give Bad Taste a shot. From what I'd heard from fans and knew of Jackson's early years as a filmmaker, I had an inkling of what to expect: a crazy plot, lots of gore, and outrageous and nasty humor, and it didn't disappoint whatsoever on any of those scores. This movie is just insane. It hits the ground running, is always moving, hardly stopping to take a breath, is totally ridiculous and silly, has loads of cartoonish, homemade gore and makeup effects, and keeps getting crazier and crazier right to the end. When you really think about it, it is truly amazing what Jackson was able to accomplish in his early twenties with no money, a 25-year old 16mm camera, his friends and himself working as actors, and having to do just about everything himself. His ambition is also very impressive, as he could have done a low-key, leisurely-paced movie, but instead decided to go for a wild, fast-paced, gory as hell splatterfest with people dangling over cliffs, car action, gunfights, a chainsaw slicing through and disemboweling aliens, and a house turning into a spaceship and taking off. As for the movie itself, it's quite entertaining, making up for being light on character and plot with lots else to grab your attention, and its cheap look and feel give it a real charm. The only problem is that it goes on a bit too long, continuing to get crazier and crazier until I'm exhausted and wish it would start wrapping up.

After hearing a recording of a desperate call for help from the small New Zealand town of Kaihoro, the Astro Investigation and Defense Service call in "the Boys," a four-man squad of their best agents, to investigate. Arriving there, one of them, Barry, finds the place seemingly deserted, but is then attacked an axe-wielding, zombie-like man in a light-blue shirt and jeans. The man is actually one of a large force of aliens who have overrun the area, with another having been captured earlier. While in constant radio contact with Derek, the scientist of the group, Barry is attacked by more of the aliens while investigating the town. Derek contacts the other two members, Ozzy and Frank, bringing them up to speed on what's happening, then decides to interrogate the captured alien, whom he has dangling over a cliff. However, his sadistic interrogation method causes the alien to let out a loud wail that brings others running to his aid. Derek manages to fend them off and kill them, but the captured alien escapes the rope and knocks him off the cliff. After finding Derek lying at the bottom, Barry contacts the others, then attempts to find the aliens' base. Meanwhile, Giles, a charity collector, arrives in Kaihoro and is attacked and eventually captured by the aliens, who drag him inside a large house. Seeing this and realizing he's found the aliens' base, Barry calls in Ozzy and Frank, while Giles awakens in the house's basement, tied up and gagged in a tub of vegetable and spice-filled water. The aliens' leader, Lord Crumb, tells Giles that they plan to eat him for lunch the next day. That night, Frank, Ozzy, and Barry sneak into the house and then Frank, disguising himself as one of the aliens after they kill him, learns that the entire population of Kaihoro has been harvested for Crumb's Crunchy Delights, an alien fast-food corporation. The boys manage to save Giles and attempt to escape with him the next day, but they get caught up in a violent gunfight. However, unbeknownst to them, help is on the way in the form of Derek, who survived the fall but is now losing a lot of his brain matter and is hellbent on killing some aliens.

At the time he made Bad Taste, Peter Jackson was little more than a 21-year old, New Zealand-born film fan who'd been making little movies on Super 8 ever since he was a young kid and had been working at the Evening Post, a newspaper based in Wellington, since he was sixteen, when he dropped out of high school. Wanting to make feature films but stymied by the fact that New Zealand, at the time, had no film industry really to speak of, Jackson decided to go out and make one himself, having already taught himself filmmaking basics like editing and special effects while making his short films. After saving up enough money to buy a rather old and used Bolex 16mm camera, he and his friends started shooting what initially started out as another short but, as time went on, grew and grew, with Jackson coming up with more ideas the more they shot. It took four years to complete, as it had to be shot on the weekends because both Jackson and his friends still had full-time jobs, and when Jim Booth of the recently formed New Zealand Film Commission saw the initial assembly, he was so impressed with Jackson's talent that he gave him a series of grants to ensure the film was completed. Jackson then quit his job, finished Bad Taste, got it into the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, and it was distributed across many different countries as a result and actually got many good reviews. Thus, Jackson's career was slowly but surely starting to gain traction.

Though you can't exactly call them fully fleshed-out characters, "the Boys" all have noteworthy personalities and each one gets his time to shine. The first one on the scene, Barry (Pete O'Herne), proves to be quite calm, despite being faced with an axe-wielding madman who pursues him to the beach, and easily blows the top of his head away with a .357 Magnum. He gets into some more trouble afterward, getting chased around the

deserted town by the aliens, but he manages to evade them and eventually finds the house that serves as their secret base, as well as sees Giles get abducted. For the first third of the movie, two other of the Boys, Frank (Mike Minett) and Ozzy (Terry Potter), are told to hang back, but when Barry sees what happens to Giles, he tells them to move in. Frank is kind of the de facto leader and is the most keen on their following the regulations, such as how they're only advised to use violence when it's

absolutely necessary and wants the rescue of Giles to be as short and quiet as possible. Ozzy, on the other hand, is more of a wild card, loves heavy metal, and is always itching to get into some action and employ as much lethal force as necessary. When they're arming up to save Giles, Ozzy is keening on using a weapon that's later revealed to be a rocket launcher but Barry dissuades him. After they infiltrate the aliens' hideout and kill one of them, Frank disguises him and listens in on a meeting between them to learn what they're up to. Unfortunately, in order to keep up appearances, he has to drink from a big bowl of green, steaming vomit, which all of the aliens dine on (even more disgusting, Frank's reaction suggests it doesn't taste that bad). After things go belly-up and they get caught up in a big gunfight, Ozzy, while they're escaping with Giles, decides to go back and finish the aliens off, a task Frank joins him in, while Barry and Giles run for it. However, neither of them manage to kill Lord Crumb.

That honor goes to the fourth and most memorable member of the group, Derek, played by Peter Jackson himself. At the beginning of the movie, Derek stays atop a cliff, monitoring Barry as he searches Kaihoro and comes across the aliens. A scientist and someone who's always believed in aliens, Derek is said to have convinced the minister that there's something strange going on here. Though he's quite nerdy and very keen on getting samples of the dead aliens for study, he's hardly a coward, as he manages to defend himself when the captured alien he's keeping watch over screams for help. Speaking of which, Derek also proves to be rather sadistic, as he not only suspends said alien over the edge of the cliff but, in order to get him to talk, starts driving a long, metal spike into his foot and even mocks his cries of pain. His torturing of this alien seemingly proves to be Derek's downfall, as he gets loose, attacks him along the side of the cliff, and sends him plummeting down to the rocks below. Though the back of his head gets smashed open and some of his brain fall out, Derek regains consciousness, actually stuffs the brain matter back into his head, stumbles to where his van is hidden, and uses a hat inside to keep his brain in place. After passing out again, he awakens the next day, begins driving his van, and when he reaches the aliens' hideout, he gets caught up in the crossfire, loses his hat, and falls back to the ground, convulsing as he loses more brain matter. This time, he uses his belt as a makeshift headband, drives the rest of the way, takes a chainsaw out from his car's trunk, and, having now gone totally crazy, starts decimating aliens with it and even uses some of their brain matter to replace his own. He gets knocked out in the chaos and remains in the house when it turns into a spaceship and flies off, but when he awakens, he kills Lord Crumb in a horrific and badass manner, then puts his skin on and heads towards the aliens' home planet, planning to continue to slaughter them when he gets there!

Giles (Craig Smith), the charity collector who picks the absolute worst day to come to Kaihoro to collect, was the focus of the short the movie started out as, as it was supposed to just be about him arriving in town, finding no one around, getting attacked and abducted, and being eaten. All of that still happens, save for the latter, as Giles is placed in a big pot of water, vegetables, and herbs in order to stew for a day before the aliens eat him, but the Boys then come in and rescue him, although he nearly gets killed in the gunfight that breaks out. Interestingly, Smith initially dropped out of the production because he got married and his wife didn't want him to appear in such a gory movie, which was the impetus for Peter Jackson to come up with all new characters and a new main plot to pick up the slack. Then, over the course of the years it took to make the movie, Smith got divorced, asked if he could come back on, and thus, Jackson and company had to find a way to weave him back into the story!

As for the aliens, there are two who are really noteworthy. One of them is Robert, the one who's initially captured by the Boys, only to get loose and cause havoc. Also played by Peter Jackson, Robert seemingly pushes Derek off the cliff to his death and then feasts on the brains of the alien killed by Barry, before chasing after Giles with a machete, only to get his hand rolled up in the car's window and dragged along as Giles tries to escape. The machete is his weapon of choice and he also has a memorably awkward gait, likely due to Derek having driven a spike through his foot, as well as impressive agility, given how he leaps right over Barry at one point. There's a memorable moment where, while making a slashing gesture to Giles as he's stewing in the pot, Robert accidentally slices his own throat open, although he survives. Most memorably, and disgustingly, he vomits up a bunch of green, steaming slime into a large bowl, which the other aliens feed on! During the climactic battle, Robert is killed when he gets impaled through the throat by a machete and nearly shoots Lord Crumb when he tries to take down one of the Boys before expiring.

As for Lord Crumb (Doug Wren), he's memorably over-the-top as the aliens' leader, telling Giles right to his face that they plan on eating him for lunch, adding that he should be honored since he's going to be the first bit of human meat they've been able to eat since arriving. However, he's not tyrannical to his servants in the least, but rather laments the loss of those who are initially killed, feels sympathy for Robert's torture at the hands of Derek, and congratulates the others on the swift job they've done in harvesting the population of Kaihoro, saying their paychecks will be very generous. He's also as eager to leave Earth as any of the others are and, above anything else, is intent on spreading the taste of human flesh across the galaxy and putting his company, Crumb's Crunchy Delights, back on top. He takes part in the firefight with the Boys, nearly getting killed in the process, and eventually drops his human disguise, which seems to cause the others to automatically do the same. In the end, Lord Crumb manages to wound Ozzy by shooting him in the leg and does escape the planet, although he doesn't get far before Derek massacres and then wears his skin as he heads to the aliens' home-world in order to wipe them out. Sadly, during post-production, Doug Wren died, so his voice had to be dubbed by somebody else. That person was Peter Vere-Jones, who not only went on to narrate the making of documentary, Good Taste Made Bad Taste, but worked with Jackson again a handful of times, doing several voices for Meet the Feebles, appearing in Dead Alive, and even doing a voice for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug decades later in 2013.

The aliens themselves are rather memorable monsters, although their concept and characterizations are simple. Except for Lord Crumb, who can speak perfectly and disguises himself as a well-dressed businessman, the others are only able to moan, groan, and howl, and they all wear the same light-blue, button shirts and blue jeans. They mainly act like typical zombies in the way they shamble around, but they're more than

capable of moving fast when they need to, are formidable in large numbers, and are capable of wielding both stabbing weapons and firearms, as well as using each other as tools like battering rams. Although Robert survives accidentally slicing his throat open, they mostly prove to be vulnerable to the same things that are deadly to humans. They're also not only flesh-eating but can actually survive on each other's regurgitated fluids,

which, again, is really gross. Notably, they're able to contort and squash their bodies into human form, which doesn't seem like a pleasant process and it's mentioned that maintaining the form is uncomfortable for them. When you see what they actually look like, you understand why, as their bodies are large and bloated, with various parts bursting out of their clothes, most notably their buttocks. They have big, fat hands and fingers, and their heads are skull-like but with bloated cheeks,

nasty teeth, and curved back noggins (a result of Peter Jackson having to use his mother's stove to bake the foam rubber). Finally, the fact that they're from an alien fast-food corporation and are harvesting human flesh in order for their company to get back on top in their intergalactic food war is a very silly but original concept, and might be something of a commentary on how actual fast-food companies are always looking for the next popular product.

Bad Taste is a lot of things but one thing it definitely isn't is technically sophisticated. That's not a slam on Peter Jackson or his very small crew, but when you look at the movie, it's obviously the work of a young, inexperienced guy with no money who's using absolutely everything he has within reach. Because it was shot on a 16mm camera that was 25-years old at the time, it looks as though it were made a decade earlier than it was. Even if you manage to find a really good print of it,

it still looks very grainy and scratchy, and there are some scenes, particularly when Giles is being kept in the pot and when Lord Crumb makes his speech to the other aliens in the house's hallway, that are so dark it's sometimes hard to tell quite what you're looking at. The camerawork, although better than you'd expect, is pretty amateurish, with lots of tight close-ups and zoom-ins, and it does tend to wobble and shake a bit (fortunately, you can always tell what's happening). The camera didn't support

sound recording, and even when the New Zealand Film Commission gave Jackson his grants and he got a new camera that did have sound, he and the rest of the people working with him had no idea how to properly record it. Because of that, the entire soundtrack, including all of the dialogue, was done in post, giving it a similar feel to European movies and how they, for decades, filmed without recording sound, with the obvious

dubbed voices and the very overdone sound effects. I will say, however, that that helps make the movie feel all the more surreal. And while they did make Pete O'Herne keep his beard the exact way it was trimmed over the four years they were shooting, continuity is often all over the place, from the actors' hairstyles and socks changing between shots to it sometimes being overcast and gray, and other times sunny and clear, even though

most of the action is supposed to be happening over the span of one day (if you look closely at a form in one shot, you can see the first day is actually Halloween, which is also Jackson's birthday). Yet, this crudeness does lend the movie a charm, as you can tell these were some guys who were just out having fun on the weekends and doing whatever they could to make it watchable, let alone finish it.

Like I said in the introduction, it's remarkable how, despite the limited resources and his paying for everything out of his own pocket, Jackson really went for it here. He had gunfights, people dangling over cliffs, a fair amount of work involving vehicles, loads of over-the-top violence and gore, and a fast-paced third act featuring a big gunfight, a chainsaw slicing through walls, doors, and aliens, a rocket launcher blowing up parts of a house (and a sheep!), and the house turning out to be a

spaceship and taking off! Just as impressive as the scope of things is how inventive Jackson was in making these sequences work. Besides making the latex alien costumes himself, he also fashioned his own lighter version of a Steadicam and made a camera crane out of aluminum, mixed in prop guns made out of it and wood with ones that fired blanks, used the big chainsaw for long shots and a smaller one in close-ups because the big one didn't actually work, had the actors, as well as some women, play the aliens in their real

form, had one of his friends sit on the hood of a van and shoot while he drove (they hit a tree stump and both his friend and the camera went flying, although neither were hurt), and seemed to actually allow himself to be suspended down along the edge of a cliff. Granted, that upper part of the cliff isn't very steep and the camera was probably able to make the drop look more dangerous than it was, but that's something I know I'd never be able to do,

given my fear of heights. Speaking of that scene, you have Derek not only suspending and torturing Robert, both of whom are played by Jackson, but you have that confrontation between them on the side of the cliff. Jackson was able to make that work by really good editing and employing doubles for certain shots, and had he not become such a famous, recognizable person, I doubt people would have ever realized he's technically fighting himself or thought about how you never see Derek and Robert's faces in the same shot. Also, the editing is quite good throughout the movie, giving it a real sense of energy and action, which is crucial during the third act.

The movie was shot entirely in Wellington, New Zealand, much of it in and around Pukerua Bay, Jackson's hometown. I really like the setting of these kinds of small, sleepy seaside towns that are wiped out by the aliens (Jackson did a really good job making them come off as totally deserted), combined with other locations like rural patches of farmland, thick forests and sparser patches of woods that dot the landscape, steep cliffs, and lovely, rocky coastlines, chief among them being Makara Beach. The

most notable location used was the Gear Homestead, a colonial house used for the aliens' base and which is an historic landmark in the area. Bill Jackson, Peter's father, had to assure the caretakers that Jackson and his friends wouldn't totally destroy the place and it seems as though they kept their promise, especially when they filmed inside it. Looking this stuff up, I was hoping they were good enough to clean up all the leftover blood and gore and make sure they didn't actually break anything and, by all accounts, they did.

Speaking of the gore, that's what Peter Jackson's early work is most well-known for, particularly in how he uses it to the point where it becomes part of the comedy, hence the term "splatstick." While not as gory as Dead Alive would prove to be years later, Bad Taste still has a plethora of over-the-top bloodletting and disgusting images that help make it the cult classic that it is. Among the many lovely sights are an alien getting the top part of his head shot off, after which he squirts out a lot of blood

and brain matter; a close-up of a metal spike being driven through Robert's foot; an alien getting shot across the torso, with big close-ups of the wounds on his front and back; many shots of the back of Derek's head cracking open, parts of his brain spilling out, and his putting them back in or substituting alien brains for them; Robert eating what's left of his dead friend's brains straight from his shattered cranium with a spoon; an alien getting a machete to the face, Dawn of the Dead style, and

Robert then getting impaled through the throat with it; and Derek chainsawing various aliens to bits, with the piece de resistance being when he kills Lord Crumb by diving down at him, sawing right through his head, all the way through the middle of his body, and coming out his rear, with his legs sticking out of where his head was, after which he actually dresses in Crumb's hollowed husk. That's just the major instances of gore, as there are also many shots of people being squirted in the face

with blood, shots of gore and brain matter on the ground, numerous squirting bullet wounds inflicted on the aliens, an unsettling shot of Crumb's face pulsating as he drops his human disguise, and the memorably gross moment where Robert vomits up a bunch of green, steaming slime into a bowl and the aliens feast on it. Aside from the shot of the bleeding cardboard boxes that contain what's left of the population of Kaihoro, as that is genuinely

disturbing, none of this is meant to be taken seriously and is played for outrageous comedy, intended to make you laugh while also going, "Ew!" And like everything else concerning this movie, it's amazing how Jackson pulled all of this off himself, creating latex masks, doing a cast of himself in order to create the puppet used for the vomiting scene, using syrup mixed with red food dye for the blood, actual chunks of meat from the butchery for the brains, and yogurt, muesli (cold oatmeal), and green dye for the vomit.

Not surprisingly, the amount of gore and violence led to censorship problems, but a major stink was raised when the movie was banned in Queensland, Australia three weeks into its run there, even though it had already been edited down for release and had been approved by the Australian Classification Board, who'd asked for said cuts to begin with. This led to the dissolution of the Queensland Film Board of Review, the organization that had banned it there, as the ACB saw what they'd done as very unprofessional and biased. Those who distributed the movie on video in Australia took advantage of this and slapped the words "BANNED IN QUEENSLAND" on the cover.

Besides the blood and guts, Jackson also came up with some really novel methods for achieving other special effects. For instance, when Ozzy starts firing at the aliens' hideout with a rocket launcher near the end of the movie, they built a 25-foot replica of the Gear Homestead and blew up parts of it with a rocket traveling on a wire (there are a handful of impressive explosions in the whole movie). Then, when the house first turns out to be a spaceship and lifts off, Jackson built a smaller

replica of the house, used another model of the road for the foreground, and simply put the house on a camera crane and lifted it up into the air. And for the shots of the house spinning around in space at the end, he built an even smaller model, this one out of cardboard boxes, and just spun it around on the turntable of an old gramophone with a backdrop of outer space behind it. I know I keep repeating myself but it's simply the truth that his dedication to this movie and his innovative ways of making things work are really impressive.

Humor-wise, Bad Taste, as its name implies, is equal parts gore-laden slapstick and nasty gross-out comedy, with a bit of cynicism and subtle references thrown in for good measure. It's also very, very oddball, established right from the opening scene, where this shadowy figure sits in a dark office, listening to a distress call from Kaihoro, and then switches the tape player off with an artificial arm that ends in a single, fake finger,

before lighting a long, thin cigarette with a lighter shaped like a dismembered hand in a black glove. Moreover, the first thing you see when the movie begins is a photo of the Queen of England, and when the guy (who is apparently named "Coldfinger," according to the credits) calls in the Boys, you see that the other buttons on this machine are to contact people as diverse as the prime minister, the Queen herself, and "Mum."

Again, that's the very first scene, and as you've already read, it just gets weirder from there. Another major oddity is the character of Derek, who's first seen with a long line of spittle running down from his mouth. His personality, the way he looks and acts, that getup and walkie-talkie he wears during the first act, and some of the lines of dialogue he has are memorably quirky, like when he's interrogating Robert and says, "My friend, the astro-bastard, time for talkies. By the time my

colleagues get here, I want to have you babbling in some extra-terrestrial language... Now, what are you dirty hooers doin' on my planet?" When he attacks Lord Crumb with the chainsaw, he yells, "Suck my spinning steel, shithead!" Then, there's his most memorable line, "I'm a Derek, and Dereks don't run!" Most of this is before he gets knocked off the cliff, smashes the back of his head open after landing on a seagull nest, and then runs about deliriously, trying to keep his brains from leaking

out of his head. When he reaches his van, which he had hidden among some bushes, you see that it has a false front seat with four goofy-looking cardboard cutouts, while he drives and looks through another windshield in the back. I seriously wondered what I was watching when that happened, and there was still another thirty or so minutes left to go. And finally, there's last disclaimer: "Any similarity to persons living or dead is an accident. Sorry."

Like I said, the gore and violence play a lot into the comedy. You have people often getting squirted in the face with blood; a moment where Derek has to shoot at other aliens while his Uzi 9mm's barrel is jammed into a dead one's torso (it makes me think of the scene in Total Recall where Quaid uses a dead man's corpse as a shield during an escalator shootout); another moment where one alien smashes another that's behind him in the head with

a sledgehammer and his arm gets shot off, leaving the mallet sticking out of his buddy's head with his arm hanging off of it; the sight of Derek falling off the cliff, yelling "Mommy!", and is later seen with his legs hanging over the top of a large rock and seagulls flying about him; Robert accidentally slitting his own throat at one point; the Boys, after sneaking into the house, tearing off one alien's head and having to clean up all the blood that spews out and get rid of the still

active head, with a thrashing chunk of spinal cord, in order to keep their cover from being blown; the sheer insanity that is the third act; and the last, insane gore gag of Derek killing Lord Crumb in such a crazy manner and then wearing his skin as he prepares to attack the aliens' home-planet. Besides the gore, there is also more traditional slapstick, like when Barry is trapped inside a shed and tries to lunge outside at an alien with a pitchfork, only for his jacket's hood to get snagged

on something behind him; the aliens using one of their own as a battering ram while trying to get at Barry; Derek trying to act all badass with his Uzi, only to nearly slip on a small bit of cow manure; the overall clumsiness of the aliens, who constantly get in each other's way and whack each other; a moment where Robert gets his hand caught in the passenger-side window of Giles' car and he drives off, forcing Robert to run along with it; and the

assorted slapstick gags that occur during the third act, with Ozzy punching an alien's face like a punching bag and kneeing him in the groin, a moment that's straight out of a cartoon with Derek chainsawing his own outline into a wall, Derek getting kicked in the balls, then flying up and hitting his head on the top of a doorway, and one of the rockets missing Crumb, barely missing Derek, going out a window behind him, and blowing up a sheep across the way.

While the gore definitely plays into this as well, there are also instances of just nasty and/or raunchy humor, chief among them being the infamous moment where Robert vomits into that bowl and the other aliens, as well as a disguised Frank, all drink from it. The vomiting itself is bad enough but then, you get plenty of close-ups of the thick, steamy, green glop, with chunks floating in it, and when Lord Crumb drinks from it, he goes, "Aren't I

lucky? I got a chunky bit!" As he hides among the aliens, Frank keeps going down the end of the line as the bowl is passed around, until he's the last one left. Moreover, though he initially hesitates, when he takes his first swig of the slime, he makes a gesture that appears to say, "That's actually not bad," and drinks some more. Normally, I hate this kind of humor, but for whatever reason, the manner in which Peter Jackson does it both here and in

Dead Alive makes it to where I can tolerate it (I've never seen Meet the Feebles, though; I have a feeling that one may push me past my limits). The overall concept of an alien fast-food organization harvesting human flesh for their customers is just as revolting as it is darkly funny, especially when you see the boxes containing the populace of Kaihoro, which are leaking blood, and you hear Lord Crumb list off the "homo sapien, low calorie delicacies" that he plans to introduce to the galaxy,

like "juicy, raw rump," "brain soup," "spinal fluid sauce," "assorted organ stews," "sapien burgers," and, "chewy homo nuggets." The sight of Giles being kept in a big pot of herbs and spices, with a tomato kept inside his mouth by tape, knowing that the aliens plan to eat him the next day is also both funny and disgusting at the same time. Moreover, there's humor in just how raunchy the aliens are, especially Crumb, who tells his cohorts, "I'm sure you'll be pleased to be leaving this shitty planet!",

and also, "The sad news is that we will be heading for Nalic Nod with six of our co-workers in a state of permanent death. They died today, murdered by some real assholes." During the climax, he also mutters, "Wankers," and, "Holy shit." Let's also not forget how big and bloated the aliens' true forms are, with their big, fat buttocks sticking out of their pants (I'm sure they get hemorrhoids like you wouldn't believe).

Though the tone is actually light-hearted, despite all the gore, there are instances of cynical humor thrown into the mix, with some jabs at government ministries and other organizations. For instance, at the beginning of the movie when Barry is being slowly pursued by the first alien, Derek suggests he kill him, Barry says, "Jeez, he could be Ministry of Works or something," and Derek comments, "No, he's moving too fast." The charity that Giles

collects for is called the Beneficial Relief & Emergency Aid Division, i.e. B.R.E.A.D., which is anything but subtle, and when Giles first gets to work collecting, he replaces his necktie with a makeshift priest's collar. Another hilarious acronym is that of the very organization the Boys work for: the Astro Investigation and Defense Service, or AIDS, which Ozzy says aloud is an awful name they need to change. But probably the darkest joke is when Frank and Ozzy question

Derek about whether or not this is an actual alien invasion and he responds with, "Well, how do you explain the disappearance of an entire township, Frank? Oh! The Kiwi Jonestown, of course, that's it! Drinking beer laced with cyanide from little polystyrene cups." As for references to other movies and media, there aren't tons but a few, most obviously when Derek comments, "There's no glowing fingers on these bastards," and when Ozzy says, "They might've come in a telephone box."

Another thing that can be said about Bad Taste is that it's a movie that wastes no time at all from the very first second, opening with the Boys being summoned and Barry encountering the one axe-wielding alien in the seemingly deserted town of Kaihoro, whose head he blows the top off. While it's not entirely nonstop action, as there are more leisurely-paced moments, like Barry and Derek talking back and forth as the former investigates the town, Derek first contacting Frank and Ozzy,

Giles entering the area and wandering around, and Barry reporting to the others about what happened to Derek, it never takes long for it to get back to business and it keeps going like this for the entirety of its 92-minute running time. Among the notable scenes are Barry getting trapped inside a tool shed by the aliens; Derek fending off the aliens that come to Robert's aid, then getting into a scuffle with him and falling off the cliff; Giles running into Robert, getting chased by him, and ending up at the

aliens' hideout; Derek regaining consciousness and wandering around while trying to keep his brains from falling out of the back of his head; and the Boys infiltrating the house in order to save Giles... and that's just in the first two acts. The last forty or so minutes consist of the extended shootout between the Boys and the aliens, a chase through the woods consisting of the Boys and Giles in a car and the aliens pursuing on foot, Derek coming in

and chainsawing a bunch of aliens, Ozzy blowing up Frank's car along with some aliens before taking the rocket launcher to part of the house, him and Frank fighting and shooting more aliens inside, and the house turning out to be a spaceship, sucking in a bunch of green felt it was using as a fake lawn, and taking off with Derek still onboard, only for him to exact grisly revenge on Lord Crumb. There's always something happening here.

However, that's the one genuine gripe I have about the movie, is that it keeps going and going and getting more insane all the while, until it reaches a point where I seriously begin to feel burned out and think, "Okay, that's enough." This feeling starts around the time the gunfight breaks out, as there's already been so much craziness leading up to it, and then, that battle itself goes on for so long and constantly cuts to what Derek is up to. At this point, while I've been having fun, I'm like, "Oh,

man, how much more of this is there?", and then, on top of that, you have the real climax, with the house getting blown apart, Frank and Ozzy infiltrating it, Derek going apeshit with the chainsaw, it taking off, and Derek killing Lord Crumb and preparing to head off to the aliens' planet in order to massacre them. It's all a bit much for me, and it doesn't help that I find a lot of this to be disorienting, as the Boys are now all dressed in black and wearing ski masks, making it really

hard to keep up with who's who in this chaos (that's a big reason why you're not going to see an action sequence breakdown here). It's something of a prelude to many people's issues with Peter Jackson's later epic movies, which they describe as being overly long and much too self-indulgent, especially in the extended versions he tends to do; if you watch his early films, you can tell that's always been a part of his style. Sometimes, I feel it works, like in Dead Alive and his King Kong movie, but other times, like here, it gets to be tiring.

The music was the work of Michelle Scullion, someone whom I'm sure was a friend of Peter Jackson's and who, despite not working on much of note since then in terms of scoring (she also helped with the music for Meet the Feebles), has had bit parts in King Kong and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. She was assisted in the score by an uncredited Jay Snowfield, who also did music work on Meet the Feebles. The score for Bad Taste is just perfect for it, as it truly highlights its crazy, bizarro tone, with a main theme that's very off-kilter and mischievous in its melody, accompanied by a sort of marching drum playing in the background. There's also an overly kiddy, carnival-like piece of music that plays over the main title, a really big, heroic-sounding theme for the start of Frank and Ozzy's final assault on the aliens (that piece of music sounds like something from The A-Team), a sort of an urgent, TV movie-esque bit of music for when Barry chases after the aliens who are going after Derek, and some really awesome, rocking and funky pieces for some of the action and chase scenes. Oddly, though, there are scenes like Derek getting attacked atop the cliff and him messing around with his brains falling out of the back of his head that are not played for thrills, suspense, or even laughs but are actually scored in a kind of disturbing manner. However, two pieces of music that really stick in my mind are when Giles parks his car near the town and first walks about it, which is scored with a very cheery, sitcom-like theme, with some religious-sounding bells added in for when he puts on the fake priest collar, and when Derek drives off in his van, which is done to this hilariously atonal horn bit that sounds like it's about to trail off and die at any moment.

There are a couple of songs in the movie as well, and both of them are awesome. One is a hard rock song called Rock Lies, performed by a band called Madlight. You hear it twice, first when Frank and Ozzy are introduced and in the lead-up to Ozzy blowing up Frank's car along with some aliens trying to work it, and both times, it's on Frank's car radio. Nothing much to say about it other than it's just killer in how it sounds and is exactly the type of music you'd expect Ozzy to be a fan of. The other is an actual title song, which was composed by Mike Minett, who played Frank, and Dave Hamilton, who was one of the aliens, and performed by a band called The Remnants. It plays over the ending credits and is a much more chill, smoother song, one that incorporates the title in a clever manner, as it's about hyping up a team to do the best they can, only to say, "But the minute/You let me down/Will leave a Bad Taste in my mouth."

Bad Taste is one wild film and a true testament to how, if you have passion and the know-how, you can make an impressive flick without a lot of money or the backing of a studio. While it's hardly a sophisticated piece in terms of its look, characters, and story, it makes up for it with characters that, if nothing else, are memorable, a nice setting in Wellington, New Zealand, lots and lots of crazy gore and makeup effects, novel and impressive special effects given what was available, a sense of humor that ranges from slapsticky and revolting to just plain strange, a quirky score and a couple of nice songs, and an almost relentless pace filled with scenes and setpieces that are quite ambitious for a bunch of young guys doing it totally on their own, which, ultimately, is what makes it so remarkable. Other than some instances where its crudeness does cause some issues, the only real gripe you may have about it is that it overstays its welcome and could begin to exhaust you long before the climax actually rolls around. That said, it is entertaining, a must-see for fans of these kinds of gory horror-comedies, and for those curious about where the very successful, award-winning Peter Jackson started out. But, before we go, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: any similarity with reviews done by others, particularly a certain video game nerd, is an accident. Sorry.