One Word Movie

Bad Taste

One day a couple of weeks ago I was hungover from a good party, so I decided to go and watch Peter Jackson's first feature, Bad Taste, at the NFT. When you're feeling all moody and over-sensitive, there's nothing better than watching some fruity love-story; so as a corollary, if you were in a state of considerable refreshment the night before, the only thing that's going to be on your wavelength is a queasy zombie flick.

Peter Jackson made Bad Taste as a labour of love over the weekends of four years; it's very much the Plan 9 from Outer Space of zombie movies. The aliens have got bendy heads, for instance, because Peter Jackson had to bake the latex masks in his mum's oven, and without the bend they wouldn't have fitted in. Well, apparently some ignorant wankers think stuff like this makes a movie shit. Such people are entitled to their opinion, of course, and are probably extremely happy in their loft apartments in Clerkenwell with only 3 cushions in the entire place, listening to Phillip Glass piano music on their biscuit-sized MP3 players, and only occasionally worrying about the cold empty feeling they get when they have to walk past the kebab shop of a night and look at the people in there who have been enjoying themselves.

No. Bad Taste is the work of someone who really really really extremely badly loves film, in the same way a 14-year-old loves tits, and has no budget, but wants special effects, gun-battles, and crane shots, for God's sake. When I was watching this film, I was reminded of how shit The Producers was, and how by comparison it came across as an robotic money-making machine that no-one gave a piss-bung about.

The other good thing about Bad Taste is that it lives up to the title. It's absolutely fascinated by gak, and there are many bits in it that make you genuinely feel like chundering. Well done Peter Jackson, this film may have cost the same as a packet of garibaldi biscuits, but it's still good.

posted by Chairman Peyote @ 8:55 AM