by Jack Morris
With the release of the The Hobbit today, I thought it would be appropriate to have a quick look back at the early films of Peter Jackson to see where the great man started. I know most people know that he is the main behind some of most successful movies of all time, but little is known about his early body of work.
With the release of the The Hobbit today, I thought it would be appropriate to have a quick look back at the early films of Peter Jackson to see where the great man started. I know most people know that he is the main behind some of most successful movies of all time, but little is known about his early body of work.
Jackson first burst onto the film making scene in his homeland of New Zealand, with his 1987 film, Bad Taste. For those that haven’t seen the film, the story consists of a group of aliens descending upon a small town intent on turning the people of Earth into their latest fast food snack. It took Jackson and his friends four years to make the film, and it's obvious to see as the hair styles change throughout the course of the movie; but it's a start. You can see that Peter has a real passion for making films, and whilst it is nothing in comparison to the scale and technique we have seen in his more recent films, it does show some early talent. The film is full of gross out humour and a bit of splatter that just goes to show what someone with a micro budget (he had to bake the masks for the aliens in his mother’s kitchen) but a huge drive can do.
Next up is Meet the Feebles from 1989. This film is certainly an experience to say the least. It has been described as The Muppets on crack, and I have to say I think that is pretty fair evaluation. Much like The Muppets this film was made with puppets, but the characters are not your cute and cuddly friends like Miss Piggy and Kermit; oh no, the characters in Meet the Feebles are the complete antithesis of these. They drink, take drugs, swear, and have copious amounts of sex. This was long before Team America even thought about making a puppet parody movie. You even have a few musical numbers thrown in for good measure. Alas, it is rather difficult to try and track down a copy of this film nowadays, although if anything I have mentioned about it has sparked your attention, it can be found on YouTube.
In 1992, Jackson once again returned to comedy horror genre with Brain Dead, and audiences certainly weren’t disappointed. The movie centres around Lionel, a good natured mummy’s boy who unwittingly allows his mother to get bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey (see if you can spot the “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” reference to this creature in his version of King Kong) whilst out on a date. The result is that his mother turns into a zombie like creature with an insatiable appetite for anything, especially flesh. No one is safe from her, not even the vicar. The movie descends into utter chaos as more and more people are infected, and Lionel has to take actions into his own hands to try and stop the zombie masses. The film once held the record for the most fake blood used in a single scene. I won’t give too much away about how they gained this record, but let me just say it involved a lawnmower! A real highlight of the film is the rather hilarious fornication between the zombie vicar and nurse and their resulting zombie offspring.
Finally, in 1996, we were given The Frighteners. From within his work within the comedy horror and gross out genres, this seems to be the most successful and recognised of Jackson’s earlier work, which, whilst I adore The Frighteners, is a real shame because his earlier films do have some real moments of genius in them. The film stars Michael J. Fox as a man who claims to be a paranormal investigator, but all his actual talents are the fact he can see and talk to ghosts, so he just sends them into a house and comes in after to collect his pay. However, when a vengeful spirit comes to town and starts taking souls, it is up to Fox’s character, Frank, to put a stop to it all. The stand out character of the film comes from Jeffrey Combs, who plays an undercover police operative who has spent just a little bit too much time infiltrating cults. Jackson has come out and said that if it wasn’t for The Frighteners that they may not have made Lord of the Rings. This is because they had so many computers left over from processing all of the special effects needed for the film they didn’t know what to do with them and the idea to adapt the books came about. So for all of you LOTR fans out there, if it wasn’t for this movie, you may never have got yours.
I would love to see Jackson return to his routes and make another splatter, comedy horror film like he used to, but I very much doubt that will happen and it seems that a lot of people are liking what he is offering nowadays.
I would love to see Jackson return to his routes and make another splatter, comedy horror film like he used to, but I very much doubt that will happen and it seems that a lot of people are liking what he is offering nowadays.
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