The film opens with a man listening to a call made by a poor bloke getting killed by some unknown thing. We then hear this man talk to another man about sending "the boys" down to investigate. This opening was great because it really helped build suspense and atmosphere through it's music and minimalism of onscreen visuals. It really gets you pumped up for the movie that will follow by showing the threat as dangerous, but also shrouding it in mystery. The opening also immediately sets up the quirky dark humour by showing the unseen man's hand replaced by a metal contraption with a severed finger on it.
The boys turn out to be the Astro Investigation and Defence Service, who turn out to be a bunch of completely normal seeming guys who are investigating the disappearance of everybody in the town of Kaihoro, New Zealand. It turns out the town has been taken over by aliens disguised as humans. We later learn that these aliens are harvesting the humans to be eaten for fast food on their planet. Although for the rest of the movie, we never experience any of the suspense the opening gave us, we do get treated to plenty of great (considering the budget) action scenes and hilarious, over-the-top gore effects.
This movie was filmed on weekends over a period of four years, with no real script and barely any money. Peter Jackson would just shoot whatever crazy things he thought up during the week on the weekend and this really showed. Not only was the movie rather unevenly paced, but one could notice the action and gore scenes getting more and more over-the-top as the movie progressed as though he was trying to outdo what he did the previous weekend. The second half of the movie also felt like one big climactic scene that goes on way to long with its constant gun fights and barely any dialogue. This unprofessionalism is actually what gave the movie a lot of its charm. You can see Jackson's ambition and effort to make a good movie, but you also see a bunch of friends having a good time making an independent film together.
Peter Jackson makes up for the movie's low budget with lots of heart and passion. This differs from a lot of other cheesy, ultra low budget horror-comedies in that you can see a lot more effort in the film-making than in others of its genre, a great early display of talent similar to Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead. He doesn't just use his camera to film the actors speaking their lines, he makes the movie more visually interesting by having more dynamic and varied cinematography as opposed to the static filmmaking that's common in many other amateur film projects like this one. And to prove his determination to make Bad Taste a good film, not just a watchable one, there is one IMDB trivia item that claims he built his own steadicam device for $15, and another claiming on scene was shot with the cameraman sitting on the hood of a car while it was driving.
What makes Bad Taste memorable for most people is the hilariously over-the-top gore effects. These effects were definitely done up to be silly and cartoonish rather than realistic, and it makes them all the more awesome. We see real care and creativity went into making these effects, and a lot of creativity definitely went into thinking up all the zany violent imagery to use these effects in. All the gore in the movie is complemented by the cartoonishly loud and exaggerated sound effects played over them. There is one really great scene that really showcases the live action cartoon feel of the movie where the aliens force a man to puke in a bowl, with a puke looking nothing like real puke and disgusting, exaggerated sound effects are played over the eating of it.
The music for this movie was a mix of spooky music for the horror scenes and energetic rock music for the action scenes. These were all very exaggerated much like everything else in the movie and complimented the comedy nicely.
Although this movie is very rough around the corners, with flawed pacing, obvious low budget production values, and inexperienced crew, all this just adds to the great charm of this goofy cult classic. I'd recommend it to anybody who wants to watch a silly horror-comedy that's low on budget but high on heart with lots of energetic action scenes and charmingly silly homemade effects, or just want to see how the director of Lord Of The Rings started out and want to see how much he's improved as a filmmaker since then. If you enjoyed such movie as The Evil Dead, Dead Alive, or Return Of The Living Dead, than this might be the type of movie you'll also enjoy.
84/100
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