BAD TASTE (Peter Jackson, 92 min, color, 1987)
What’s Happening: Goofy commandos battle aliens seeking to market humans as food
Famous For: First feature film from director of Lord of the Rings
Considering that Bad Taste started as a short inspired by Phantasm and Evil Dead, got expanded into a feature film on weekends over four years, and was largely made up along the way, it’s a pretty astounding achievement.
Oh – and Jackson himself handled the weapon props, alien masks, and gore effects.
Ah, the gore effects, the main point of the picture. It seems no alien can die in a normal way. He must be bisected vertically, bisected horizontally, decapitated, half-decapitated, dismembered, exploded, or shot in ways that produce maximum spurting blood.
It’s all done with comic music and dialogue, and for viewers in the mood it’s extremely entertaining. My only ironic criticism is that it might be too much of a good thing; 82 mins would have been better than 92.
You can spot plenty of continuity errors along the way, but this is part of the charm. And you might not even notice the errors amidst Jackson’s incredible array of camera moves and angles.
And you can follow the main action with no problem. Jackson simply has perfect filmmaking intuition. He also plays both Derek (cleanshaven) and Robert (with his usual Hobbit scruffiness).
You’d think this project would have satisfied Jackson’s “taste” for gore, but he followed up with Meet the Feebles, an outrageously disgusting Muppets parody, and Dead Alive (a.k.a. “Braindead”) which is a partial remake of Bad Taste and possibly the greatest camp-gore picture ever filmed.
Action: 8. Gore: 10. Sex: 1. Quality: 8. Camp: 7.
Don’t miss: Unhinged
Quotable query: “Can’t aliens be friendly?”
Article text copyright 2025 David Elroy Goldweber
Claws & Saucers 
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