Bad Taste

A review by Nick Peron

We interupt this review for a very special message, parents make sure you have your kids in the room:

Howdy friend, how are you? Have a seat there champ. Good and comfy? That's great. Here have a soda. Now you're mother and I decided that now was a very good time to give you a little talk about some changes you're going to have to learn to cope with. Are you ready? Now, there comes a time in a boys life where he gets used to the way a his old man writes a review lampooning movies. Call it the wisdom of age, call it a mid-life crisis, but what your pappy* is trying to tell you that from now on he's going to be writing a bit differently than you're used too. Oh sure, you've already read a lot of things that daddy has wrote in the past (You know on his other website *shameless plug*) but he's going through a bit of a change. You see, some grown-ups when they reach a certain age they stop writing incoheirent rants that deviate from the original subject and buy a fast car, start combing over their bald spot, and dating women that are at least 20 years younger than them. Others, just change their writing style and plug along with life. Since your old man here would go to jail for trying to hook up with 5 year olds, he decided to take the latter as opposed to the former. So, without further adue, please enjoy my review of Bad Taste, the movie that Peter Jackson made before he became a fat bastard.

* The multiple fatherly titles used in reference to myself were added into the above prologue to make this review sexier to women. It probably didn't work, but I thought it would be worth a try.

We now return to our regularly scheduled reivew, already in progress:

So you thought Peter Jackson’s greatest cinematic achievement was The Lord of the Rings trilogy did you? You honestly thought that, you pea-brained, cultureless moron? You are wrong. And stupid. And possibly ugly. And you stink. Of Pork. Piggy.

No folks, LOTR is not the best Peter Jackson film ever made, it is this one: Bad Taste. Peter Jackson’s first film, and that’s for the following reasons:

1.) It’s considered a foreign film, as it was created completely in New Zealand with funding from the New Zealand government and not backed by a major film studio. See in other countries the government will provide funding or tax breaks for film productions made on native soil. Unlike America, where you have Arnold complaining about Canadians stealing all the jobs and taking a pay cut because he's a big pussy.

2.) Where as it took Jackson three years to make three LOTR movies, it took him FOUR years to make Bad Taste. So you KNOW it’s better because he put so much time in it. Which would you rather see? Three movies that took three years to make, or one movie that took FOUR years to make.

3.) At no point in LOTR do you have a car with a card-board cutout of the Beatles in their Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Band outfits.

4.) None of the LOTR movies have any of the characters on the front cover flipping you off.

So, What Other Hollywood people Got Their Start in This Film?

In a word none. Peter Jackson was one of the few people who went on to bigger and better things in the world of movies. He would go on to work on other New Zealand flics like Meet the Feebles (1989), and Dead Alive (1992), and yeah, some shitty trilogy called Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) which was based on some book series nobody has ever heard about.

Terry Potter, who plays the role of Ozzie in Bad Taste went onto an exciting career as a gaffer*. For such films as Nuns on the Run (1990), Highlander II: The Quickening (1991), and Golden Eye (1995) (which means he possibly had to share a trailer or at least a buffet table with Joe Don Baker… * Shudder * ) Other than that, nobody really.

Okay, So What’s This Movie About?:
So picture this, you sir are an owner of a fast food franchise, and right now you need a new taste sensation to keep your customers coming up to the troth for more even though they have no energy, heart problems and a high blood pressure. Oh, and you’re in outer space….. Because you’re an alien or something… So what do you do? You let them have their meat and beat it too... er... eat it too. But not just any meat, human meat.

What better thing to chomp down during those interstellar drives through the universe than chomping down on some nice tasty human burgers! Not just any human meat: New Zealander human meat! Mmm-mmm, Yummy! This my friends, is the key plot point to Bad Taste! So yes, that means no sissy hobbits running around, no talking trees, no kings, no rings. Just fucking fast-food aliens! Period.

You have to commend them on their choice of human meat, they certainly picked a hearty breed of humans with their New Zealander meat. I mean, American meat is too fatty! Etheopian? There's hardly any meat on them bones! British? Look man, for a race that spawned Benny Hill are you going to trust putting any British flesh in your mouth? I sure as hell wouldn't.

So, the aliens, are part of Crumb’s Crunchy Delights (Said intergalactic fast-food chain that is harvesting human meat for the next intergalactic fast food craze!) has landed in the New Zealand town of Kaihoro and slaughtered all it’s inhabitances.  New Zealand’s National Air and Space Defense League (They don’t have magic decoder rings, but they got a cigarette smoking guy in a chair with a prosthetic hand with only one finger, which he attaches his smokes to with band-aids! Certainly better than a crusty old wizard with chicken soup in his beard!) sends in their Astro-Investigation and Defense Servies (If you didn’t catch the joke, it’s called AIDS for short, because as we all know, Acquired Immune Deficiency Disorder, is not only topical, but it’s always great to pop it in somewhere as a joke – AIDS the Cancer joke of the 21st Century…. And for those of you who are out raged by this comment I have just made: 1) Fuck you. and 2) Get a sense of humor, while there's still time) to investigate the disappearance of an entire town after strange UFO activity was detected.
Soon the AIDS team has to fight off alien warriors (That of course look like humans) and stumble upon the plot to harvest humans as the next burger sensation. They save a fraudulent donations collector and the head alien baddy gets chainsawed to death while trying to make his escape.
In the end, and Peter Jackson’s is shot into space (see, the movie has a happy ending!)

Things To Look Out for In This Movie:

1. Some really gnarly head explosions.
2. Peter Jackson falling off a cliff, being pecked at by seagulls, and then spending the rest of the movie stopping his brains from leaking out of the hole in his head, just like in real life!
3. Peter Jackson driving a car with cut outs of the Beatles in their Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Band outfits. This is one of those wacky New Zealander cars where the driver has to stand up.
4. Aliens eating vomit out of a big glass bowl!
5. A traditional New Zealand historical site gets blown up!
6. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention they shot Peter Jackson out in to space?

Final Thoughts:

My final thoughts about Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste, is that despite it’s low production values, it sure as hell is more interesting than Lord of the Rings.
Everyone on the face of the fucking planet has told me a million times over that “You have to see Lord of the Rings! It’s amazing! I’ve seen it fifteen million times, and I collected all the toys from Taco Bell! And I have sexual fantasies about Frodo putting his Hobbit meat into my corn-hole! ”
Let me provide you with a practical way you could ever make me watch any of those three movies, post haste and in the following order:

1. Take all three movies, slam them together. Now cut about 50 hours of the films combined run time.
2. Replace Elija Wood with Nikki Cox (Run Ronnie Run!, “Unhappily Ever After”) and make her parade around the course of the movie in a thong-bikini being chased by a tank that blows her up in the end (It's a love-hate thing)
3. Insert about five hours of boobs
4. Increase the amount of head explosions from zero to 20.
5. Shit jokes. Lot’s of Shit Jokes.
6. Fat people falling down in a variety of different (and increasingly painful) ways as a form of comedic effect.

You know what. Fuck it. Forget making me watch Lord of the Rings, how about Peter Jackson does a live action remake of a kick ass fantasy movie, like Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards (1977), NOW THAT was a kick ass fantasy movie. I’m sorry but Tolken is fucking boring and slightly rife with gayness.
I was supposed to talk about Bad Taste here wasn’t I? Well I suppose I should try and explain my thesis about why I think that Bad Taste was infinitely better than LOTR’s or something. I mean that is the whole point of this little rant right?
Well nail my point home folks: THE CREATIVITY! JESUS FUCK! WASN’T THAT OBVIOUS ENOUGH? In his Indie days, Peter Jackson could get away with having a bunch of head explode, guys eating vomit and naming a space investigation agency after one of the nastiest viruses on the planet as a joke in poor taste!  The movie is also bluntly honest about it’s intentions, creating entertainment in the lowest taste bracket possible.
There is NO WAY in his current popularity that he would be able to pull off the type of movie he made in his hay-days as an indie, and that sucks, because really he did some very good stuff back then, and his creativity (although I can admit, yes, in poor taste) was unbound by the corporate minded movie houses that have “target audiences” and “market research” to tell him how to make a movie.
And that my friends, is why Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste is much better than LOTR. Oh that and, Peter Jackson actually wrote, directed, produced, and acted in Bad Taste, instead of taking an already existing idea and cashing into it’s potential franchise.
Also, Hollywood turned Peter Jackson into a fat bastard.

Watching This Movie is Like:

As a way of spicing up the review process, all of my reviews will end wit a comparisson of watching the film being reviewed is akin too. So for example watching Peter Jackson's Bad Taste is like having your nipples gently tweased by a stranger in the dark. It's a little freaky at first, but then you kind of grow to like it. It starts to turn you on. My god, does it feel good! And you get all excited and you're thinking "Well who is my mystery nipple tweaker?" and you turn on the light and are shocked to find out that the person in question is the guy who lives in the apartment next door who always yells at his wife and appears to be greasy 24/7, and he's only wearing a thong, and he's very hairy. Be smart friends, when a stranger is tweaking your nipples in the dark, sometimes it's best not to find out what they look like.

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