Peter Jackson's first film is a hilarious gore-comedy is a must for fans of the splatter genre. I just saw this last night and I'm still laughing at how hilarious this is. Peter Jackson's Derek is the perfect quirky hero in this absurd comedy about Aliens landing in a small New Zealand town and packaging the locals for "Crumb's Crunchy Delight" fast food chain. If you haven't already, see this movie.  8)

****/***** - I would rate this higher if Derek had more screentime...

I've been meaning to get my hands on Peter Jackson's Bad Taste for some time now. After failing to find it at any video rental stores and not having access to a Netflix account anymore, I decided to blind buy it. I didn't see the harm in coughing up a mere ten dollars for a Peter Jackson film I've never seen before as he has yet to make a bad one IMO and, after all, how could something titled Bad Taste possibly be bad ;)? As I expected, it delivered.

The film stars out much like George Romero's "The Crazies" with government officials battling crazed individuals running around like maniacs. But instead of by-the-book military men, it's trigger-happy New Zealand locals respectively called "The Boys", and instead of "crazies", it's aliens taking on human form. The main plot follows the Boys' mission to rescue a poor soul from being made into intergalactic fast-food.

The acting in Bad Taste, as one would expect, is goofy and over-the-top and lines like "eat led, suckah!" and "suck my spinning steel, s**t-head" don't help. But ultimately, it is quite amusing, as I'm sure it was intended to be, and doesn't make the film any less watchable.

The filmmaking is much like that of a group of friends making a video in one's backyard. The camerawork is often frantic and jittery ala The Evil Dead but lacks its creativity. Nevertheless, it fits quite well.

The gore seems intended to be more humorous than violent. Brains are primarily featured. There are many scenes of feet stepping into various disgusting substances, a grossout scene involving alien vomit (produced by Peter Jackson himself playing one of them), and a subplot of a man with the back of his skull hanging open throughout the film, constantly spilling out its contents. The film does come from the man who made Dead Alive so the gore is far from subtle and there are a few scenes involving a chainsaw.

All in all, Bad Taste is a genuinely entertaining low-budget horror film that delivers the goods in terms of gore and also quite a few laughs. Just don't watch it expecting Lord Of The Rings.

Subplot? The movie was all about Derek, and Derek = Peter Jackson!

anyone else seen this flicker?

Many times.

Great stuff.  

Can't really say more.

I've watched some of it and to be honest I didn't really like it, I might be the only person who thinks peters early work is weak... I'll watch it again one day to be sure but that's only my opinion.

Watched it and thought is was poor! Really didn't like it at all. I was shocked when I found out it was Peter Jackson who made it, really.

Really? Didn't you know Peter Jackson made it?? You can even see him on screen! I agee, though, it just seemd to over the top for me. Dead Alive was much better, which is wierd because it's even voilenter.

I watched it back in 1997 when I was at university and had no idea who Peter Jackson was!