Years before he came to be seen as the very definition of tenacity in the form of his endeavour to adapt the titanic novel The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson was a lesser-known New Zealand filmmaker who simply wanted to direct stories that interested him, paying tribute to existing genres while forging his own path forward. It took some time for him to come to be seen as a stalwart of big-budget filmmaking, but it was a worthwhile journey, since we ultimately ended up with some of the greatest films of the 21st century. However, the subject of this discussion isn’t about his more well-known achievements, but rather voyaging to the very start of his career, whereby Jackson was nothing more than an ambitious young film lover who decided to cobble together a team of friends in the small, quaint New Zealand town where he grew up, armed with a camera and a few litres of fake blood, creating the film that would come to be known as, quite appropriately, Bad Taste – his directorial debut and one of the most audacious introductions a filmmaker has ever had to their career. Telling the story of a group of people who unearth a sinister conspiracy whereby aliens invade the planet to harvest humans for a new intergalactic fast food restaurant, leading to a violent showdown as our heroes do their best to destroy these malicious beings, which proves to be a much more difficult task than they initially imagined. Jackson, who not only directed the film, but essentially did everything from writing the screenplay to physically crafting the special effects that are the very definition of homemade, demonstrated nothing but pure ambition in the crafting of this film, a daring and provocative dark comedy with a satirical edge and an endless stream of unforgettable imagery, all of it tenderly placed together by a rambunctious young director clearly attempting to make some difference in an industry he deeply admired.

1987 was a banner year for films about ordinary people uncovering sinister plots revolving around alien entities making their way to Planet Earth, disguising themselves as humans and putting together a plan to bring an end to the human race through taking advantage of what they considered to be an inferior species – John Carpenter did spectacularly well with this premise in They Live, and Jackson follows a very similar narrative in Bad Taste, a film that is comprised of multiple intersecting genres. Jackson’s approach is something of a cinematic melting pot – every genre that inspired or influenced him is present throughout this film, running the gamut from science fiction to body horror, dark comedy to martial arts and action, and absolutely everything in between. Even within these broad genres, we see division – the comedy oscillates between sardonic satire and off-the-wall slapstick, often even existing in tandem and managing to be quite effective, despite the sometimes jagged tone and intentionally over-the-top style that would be ineffective if it hadn’t been made by someone driven by pure audacity more than anything else. The aspect that binds this film together is not its intention to merely combine different genres, but rather doing so in a way that pays tribute to all of these genres. The crew didn’t have much more than a shoestring budget and a camera when they set out to make this film, but their reverence is clear from the first moments, and somehow it manages to become just as extraordinary as the science fiction and horror films that it satirizes, which is always the sign that a film is truly successful, since being viewed as a peer to the works that inspired a particular film is a mark of exceptional quality and undeniably artistic integrity, something that has been at the heart of nearly all of Jackson’s films, this just being his first foray into the art of filmmaking, as well as one of his most ambitious.

John Waters famously quipped that in order to have good taste, you need to understand and appreciate bad taste – and as the title suggests, Jackson is very much adherent to this perspective, since nearly every frame of Bad Taste is composed of an endless array of images and sounds that are the epitome of an assault on the senses. This film is not at all for the faint of heart – in fact, from the first moments of the film, it is immediately clear that this is going to be massively divisive, almost to the point where it borders on slightly unwatchable until we find the story hitting its stride. The violence and gore throughout this film is so potent, it becomes almost comical – this isn’t the kind of tasteful use of violence, but rather the kind that is absolutely revolting, and anyone who doesn’t feel at least partially nauseous at some point is either desensitized to this kind of grotesquerie, or is somehow immune to the very intentional attempts to repulse the viewer. Yet, this is the entire purpose of the film – Jackson made this film seemingly without much of a script or narrative structure, and the vast majority of the plot is just a series of fight scenes between the two rival groups. Without much of a narrative to guide them, the cast and crew instead heightened the qualities that they had managed to master, which were the use of practical effects as a narrative device. At every moment throughout this film, there is something daring and unsettling in terms of the violence, which is harsh and disgusting, but also very effective, and once we can get past that initial shock, the rest of the film is a perverse delight. The effects themselves, while clearly rudimentary, are oddly effective in establishing a very clear tone, and Jackson made it obvious from the start that realism was not something that interested him much, and the extreme violence that instils a genuine sense of dread in the viewer is instead the quality that we tend to remember most vividly, for better or worse.

Regardless of how repulsive and grotesque it may be, its difficult not to appreciate the effort that went into Bad Taste, which is oddly one of the most inspiring filmmaking stories of the past few decades. This is an example of the niche sub-genre of the “do-it-yourself” horror, whereby a group of ambitious young creatives gather and pull together whatever paltry resources they could get their hands on, whether through begging, borrowing or stealing in many cases, and arrange them in such a way that they become the foundation for the film. There’s an alternative reality where Jackson was given a bundle of funding beforehand and could have developed the film to be a polished, neatly-made blockbuster (especially since the concept itself is brilliant), but if that had happened, we’d have not witnessed possibly one of the most daring debuts of the 1980s, a film that builds its appeal on the fact that it is so rough and raw, made by a group of amateurs whose inexperience is not only endearing, it borders on absolutely genius, which is an incredible achievement that elevates this film and makes it the very definition of ambition. It does take some kind of a sense of humour to fully appreciate this film, since it’s not intended to be taken seriously at all. Its often the most eccentric aspects of the film that make it so intriguing, and while the violence is often quite brutal and disgusting, it fits in perfectly with the more imperfect aspects of Bad Taste, a film that thrives precisely on its ability to shock and provoke, and doing so with such paltry resources only makes it even more endearing and entertaining, as well as deeply audacious in unexpectedly interesting ways. Kudos need to go to Jackson for the effort that he put into realising this film, a far more compelling achievement solely based on his tenacity and willingness to take risks.

Jackson has certainly come a long way since these early days of filmmaking, and it is impossible to imagine anyone in the late 1980s could ever imagine the director of films such as Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles could ever be capable of making anything that wasn’t vulgar and grotesque. In many ways, these films indicate that Jackson could have easily had a profitable career as a horror filmmaker, especially since Bad Taste is one of the most purely ambitious entries into the genre from this period. It is certainly an acquired taste (no pun intended) – the story is practically non-existent, and the entirety of the film can be reduced to a meandering story of a group of young men that go head-to-head with an alien collective that want to turn them into junk food, leading to the most violent, over-the-top and ridiculous fights ever committed to film. Yet, the humour is present from the start, and everything is covered in a thick layer of irony that Jackson uses to his advantage. The narrative goes in unexpected directions, and very few of them make sense – in fact, nothing in this film seems to adhere to rational thought, but that’s all part of its charm, which is defined by the viewer’s ability to surrender to the unhinged madness and approach this film with some degree of a sense of humour, which is incredibly important as it dictates our overall experience with the film. As a whole, Bad Taste is a tremendous debut for Jackson, and while he would only momentarily return to this kind of subversive, darkly comedic filmmaking again as a director, we can appreciate that this revered filmmaker began his career with such a bizarre, off-the-wall masterpiece, since it proves that if he can use this to launch himself to become such a respected artist, there is hope for all of us who have a penchant for the bizarre and the desire to showcase our interests to the wider world.