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| A grisly alien in a suit, flipping the bird while holding a Kalashnikov makes up this eye-popping poster for Peter Jackson's Bad Taste |
Aliens land by a small town in New Zealand to harvest humans for fast food consumption, but are met with a ragtag para-military resistance.
Bad Taste is written by Ken Hammon (The Murder House (1998, short)), Tony Hiles (Jack Brown Genius (1996)) and debuting New Zealander master filmmaker co-writer/director/cinematographer/co-editor/co-star Peter Jackson (The Frighteners (1996)).
Bad Taste is a gory crazy-comedy: Guts, blood and brains fly right and left, while just about everyone over-act absurdly throughout, - all in pretty bad taste, some might argue. But the film is highly entertaining and seriously impressive technically for a debut, all things considered.
The amount of special effects in Bad Taste is enormous, and the film is funny, made with tons of boyish glee and enthusiasm and really out there. It points ahead to Jackson's best film, Dead Alive/Braindead (1992) for us who dare prefer it over the filmmaker's later Lord of the Rings triumphs.
Related posts:
Peter Jackson: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) - Jackson returns with overrated, artificial-looking turkey
The Lovely Bones (2009) - Despite qualities, Jackson's metaphysical crime drama is a wasteful jumble
The Frighteners (1996) - FX-driven ghost comedy madness
Top 10: The best big flop movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Braindead/Dead Alive (1992) - Jackson's best film ever is a gore classic!
Cost: Reportedly 260k NZ$, approximately 163k $
Box office: Uncertain but in excess of 114k $
= Uncertain but likely a huge hit (projected return of at least 6.13 times its cost)
[Bad Taste was released 25 December (New Zealand) and runs 92 minutes. Shooting took place in New Zealand from 1983-87. Jackson shot the film reportedly without a script, (so the three writer's credits are seemingly more for thinking up ideas through the long shooting process), on a 25 year-old 16 mm Bolex camera, funding it mostly himself, with friends acting in the film. All the alien masks were reportedly baked in Jackson's mother's oven! The New Zealand Film Commission invested 235k NZ$ into the completion of the film, bringing its total cost to 260k $, since 25k $ were reportedly spent besides this money. The details concerning the film's performance in New Zealand or any of the other many markets that it released in are regrettably not available online, but it is likely that the film at least grossed 1-2 mil. $ and would therefore be at least a huge hit. The only available gross number is that the film sold 29k tickets in France, which accounts for approximately 114k $. The film was temporarily banned in Queensland, Australia, and censored in other markets. Jackson returned with Meet the Feebles (1989). Bad Taste is fresh at 71 % with a 6.40/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Bad Taste?
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