Peter Jackson
Bad Taste

"Apparently, the soup is ready!". This is just one of the many main slogans that advertised this film in 1987. The year when Peter Jackson, a young New Zealander passionate about photography, managed to enter the world of cinema with this small great film. Initially conceived as a short film, "Bad Taste" is the story of a group of five special agents, also known as "The Boys", who embark on a mission to investigate the disappearance of an entire population from the town of Kaihoro, a name invented on Jackson's own initiative. 

They discover that the real cause is a group of anthropophagous aliens, intending to promote the fast food chain of their planet with human meat, which they find very exquisite. Their plans are thwarted by the intervention of this special team. Costing more than 230 thousand dollars, shot without cutting-edge special effects but experimenting with only the possible makeshift means, this "Bad Taste," known in Italy as "Fuori Di Testa," has become over the years a true cult movie of the genre, which had already been fortunate in the past in other historical films like Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead" or John Carpenter's "The Thing": the main feature of this film is entertainment through simple yet powerful splatter special effects.

With his own unique humor, Jackson plays a lot with these special effects, entertaining the audience with nauseating scenes of severed heads, spraying blood, exploding eyes, and other scenes that have become cult, such as the green vomit scene. Shot with a 16 mm, it is perhaps the film that best represents the concept of a splatter movie, a typical Midnight movie that is absolutely amusing, almost a parody of a science fiction film. The cast consists of unknown actors who haven't appeared again in the future, except for Peter Jackson himself, who plays two roles in the film: the alien Robert, but especially Derek, the most wild and crazy character in the film: the scene with the chainsaw and the smashed brain is hilarious.

Ninety minutes of pure entertainment, and this very short film effect makes it a fantastic film of the genre: fabulous special effects, despite not being cutting-edge, the dubbing by Tonino Accolla for Derek is appropriate (for those who don't know, he is the voice of Homer Simpson and Eddie Murphy), and even the plot, which might seem trivial and predictable, hides very interesting points, especially regarding many citations and parodies of B-movies and cult films, like "The Last House on the Left," "Night of the Living Dead," and even "Cannibal Holocaust."

A surprising film, although with the subsequent "Splatters," Jackson would surpass himself.