Starring Terry Potter, Pete O’Herne, Craig Smith, Mike Minett, Peter Jackson, Doug Wren, Dean Lawrie, Peter Vere-Jones
Directed by Peter Jackson
Expectations: This is one of my favorite movies.
That’s right, four stars. No general scale, no B-Movie scale — just four stars, straight up. You might think there’s a flaw in my logic to award an amateur film such as Bad Taste a perfect score, and maybe you’re right. But to me, Bad Taste is a perfect movie. I wouldn’t change a single thing about it; I love it unconditionally. Pushing my love aside for just a second, though, the film is also an incredibly ambitious and impressive début, made all the more amazing when you dig a little deeper and discover the story of how it was made.
In his mid-20s and ready to take on the world, Peter Jackson got a bunch of his friends and workmates together to make Bad Taste. He would film it on Sunday afternoons over the course of four years, creating all the special FX himself, as well as hand-building the camera dollies, cranes and Steadicam equipment. As he says in the making-of documentary Good Taste Made Bad Taste, “Normally, if you buy a proper one, they’re about 40 or 50 grand, but this one cost about 20 bucks.” And it’s this “I can do anything” spirit, unrestricted by normal mental barriers, that typifies Bad Taste, and Jackson’s filmography overall.