Butcher Block is a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films and the minds behind them. Dedicated to graphic gore and splatter, each week will explore the dark, the disturbed, and the depraved in horror, and the blood and guts involved. For the films that use special effects of gore as an art form, and the fans that revel in the carnage, this series is for you.
When most people hear the name Peter Jackson, they think of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit series, King Kong, and blockbuster spectacles. For horror fans, he’s the director that delivered the fun horror comedy The Frighteners. And before that? A career debut with a trio of horror’s goriest splatter comedies, starting with Bad Taste.
The irony is that Jackson didn’t really have any interest in directing when he began. That interest came later. He was much more interested in special effects, and heavily influenced by the work of Tom Savini. So, he set out to make a 10-15 minute short film with an old 16mm camera. He shot on the weekends over the course of a year, just sticking tins of film under his bed as he went without much thought. After taking a week off of work to edit the footage, he realized he had a 60-minute movie on his hands without an ending. Which meant there was no other direction to go but to add on to the runtime and give it a proper ending.
Jackson also noticed that his rough first cut wasn’t very exciting. Since special effects is what got him interested in filmmaking in the first place, it was an easy fix- throw in all the gore he could manage. In addition to writing, directing, producing, handling cinematography, and appearing on screen in numerous roles, Jackson handled the film’s special effects and makeup effects. The most effective aspect of the movie, no matter how over-the-top the gore gags get.
The plot is pretty simple. The residents in the town of Kaihoro have gone missing, and Astro Investigation and Defence Service (AIDS) sends out four agents to investigate. They find the residents have been replaced by man-eating aliens disguised as humans in blue button-down shirts. Of the four agents, Jackson plays Derek, the most tenacious and persistent of the heroes. Derek is the comedic relief, and as such takes an insane amount of injury and abuse until he’s had enough of the alien menace.
Heads are blown to smithereens. Aliens puke neon green goo to be passed around and slurped up. And then there’s Derek. He falls off cliffs headfirst onto rocks. He survives and puts his brain back in his head, to be secured in place with a belt. It becomes a running gag for Derek to have to stuff those brains back in his skull in the midst of alien battle. Look for Derek to be “born again” via chainsaw in the film’s final moments; a precursor to Lionel’s bloody lawnmower triumph in Dead Alive/Braindead to be sure.
Four years later, and with the financial help of the New Zealand Film Commission, Bad Taste was completed and sold to many countries after playing at the Cannes Film Festival. A lighthearted comedy compared to Jackson’s immediate follow-up, Meet the Feebles. As it stands, Bad Taste is a goofy DIY splatstick film that has no aim beyond pure entertainment. There’s no hidden message or agenda, just an aspiring special effects artist teaching himself how to make a film. His love of gore and special effects foremost on display.