"Jim Barratt tucks into Peter Jackson's debut, showing the savvy behind the cult colours of Jackson's 'splatstick' splash. Former BBFC examiner Barratt sideswipes censorious sensibilities by situating gore in madcap context and, most crucially, he quantifies Bad Taste as a labour of love and levity, always keeping the bearded Kiwi's spirit of fanboy joy in mind."
Kevin Harley, Total Film magazine
Cult classic
Jackson's debut feature, Bad Taste, has rightfully earned its place in the cult hall of infamy. Once banned in less enlightened parts of the world, the film launched the career of the world's highest paid filmmaker and paved the way for Oscar-winning glory and a Hobbit invasion Down Under.
"The author, Jim Barratt, is a fine choice for this book: as a former Film and Video Examiner for the British Board of Film Classification he can provide some rare facts about the various censorship issues that BAD TASTE sometimes encountered, and how, eventually, it was cleared of that danger in most countries, passing uncut in spite of its copious amounts of splattering gore, vomit, goo and the like."
Dejan Ognjanovic, www.beyondhollywood.com
Keaton, Romero, Python
Yet this ever-so-humble beginning has been largely overlooked outside of the fan community: until now.
Bad Taste, published by Wallflower Press in December 2008, recounts the fascinating story behind this landmark film, with its riotous blend silent-era slapstick, Romero-inspired gore and Monty Python lunacy. Starting with its lengthy, homemade production, the book casts a weather eye across its marketing and distribution as a 'Kiwi Kult Klassic' after wildly successful market screenings in Cannes, before examining how Bad Taste found a loyal following that continues to grow right across the globe.
"Jim Barratt's CULTOGRAPHIES book is a timely and accurate reflection on the genesis of Peter Jackson's first film BAD TASTE and its reception by fun-splatter fans around the world. Jim makes full use of memories, hindsight and analytical research, painting a colourful word picture of the drive behind the film, the long odds, and many droll moments during the making and release. BAD TASTE has long become firmly embedded in the hearts and minds of cult-cinema aficionados and every true fan should have a copy of this book - no, strike that - EVERYBODY should have a copy."
Tony Hiles, Consultant Producer on Bad Taste, and Director of Good Taste Made Bad Taste.
The following extract is taken from the Prologue. Details about where to purchase a copy of the book can be found at the bottom of the page.
* * *
Prologue
In less than one hundred days the Dunedin was berthed on the Thames and all but one of its nearly 5,000 carcasses of mutton, lamb and pork had been passed fit for sale at a price nearly double what they would have made back home.
'From a purely technical perspective', notes historian James Belich, 'refrigeration was the knight in icy armour that rode to the rescue of the New Zealand economy in the 1880s' (2001: 54).
Within a short period the fortunes of the ailing economy were reversed, and an industry was born whose scale and importance had a profound impact on almost every aspect of New Zealand life. Farming, and the rural landscape upon which it thrived, was transformed and meat works sprang up everywhere.
'It is difficult to realise that only about thirty-five years have elapsed since one of the most important of the world's industries was inaugurated, resulting in the enormous and increasing trade of the present day', wrote M.A. Elliott in the New Zealand Journal of Science and Technology in 1918. 'And yet the whole of this great industry, and to a very great extent the general prosperity and advancement of New Zealand, hangs on the slender piston rod of a refrigerating machine' (1918).
From tiny acorns, mighty oaks grow.
James Gear was one of those whose personal fortune was made by the burgeoning meat industry. Originally from Somerset in England, Gear had a successful business in the butchers' trade, serving the local market around Wellington, when refrigeration made meat export a lucrative prospect.
Sensing an opportunity he founded the Gear Meat Preserving and Freezing Company of New Zealand in 1882, only months after the Dunedin's pioneering cargo had sold at Smithfield market.
That same year he built a grand wooden colonial homestead, in the style of an Italian Palazzo, outside Porirua near the capital. A century later, Gear Homestead, as it is known today, was one of the main locations used in Bad Taste, doubling as the alien spaceship at the centre of Lord Crumb's human meat export operation.
In March 2002, one hundred and twenty years after the Dunedin's trailblazing voyage, Dr Ruth Harley, CEO of the New Zealand Film Commission, gave a presentation entitled 'How we created world class performance'.(1) It was part of a three-day event led by New Zealand's Ministry of Economic Development, and the matter under consideration on that early autumn day in Christchurch was how innovation could be yoked into the service of the country's enterprise culture.
This gathering of the great and the good, comprising leading thinkers from business, politics and academia, might seem a million miles removed from the gory frivolity of Bad Taste, but Dr Harley's speech made ample reference to it nonetheless.
For in December 2000, London had played host to the world premiere of The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), the first film in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. The last film in the series, The Return of the King (2003), would go on to win no fewer than eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. The three films grossed in excess of $2.8 billion worldwide, even before sales of DVDs, merchandising and other revenue sources (Bart 2006: 52).
Little wonder, then, that Dr Harley's speech should use Jackson's career as an example of what can be achieved through innovation and enterprise. By dint of hard work, determination and natural talent nurtured by the benevolent hand of state investment (enter the New Zealand Film Commission), Jackson's is arguably the most remarkable film career in New Zealand's history, helping to elevate the national industry to, in Harley's words, 'world class performance'.(2) And it all began with Bad Taste.
From tiny acorns, mighty, Ent-sized oaks grow.
The themes of enterprise and meat export are not the only sinuous links between the Dunedin and Bad Taste. In their own way each story exemplifies, and helps to perpetuate, mythical aspects of the national character of New Zealanders: the qualities of self-reliance, tenacity and, perhaps above all, the have-a-go ingenuity that sees every problem as a challenge to be overcome with a bit of common sense and some Number 8 fencing wire.
The economic miracle that followed in the wake of the Dunedin came about because there was a strong demand, an appetite, for New Zealand meat among those queuing at butchers' slabs the length and breadth of Mother Britain. That is the essence of benign business enterprise: catering to demand in a way that promotes mutual benefit. And it is a quality that has shone through in Jackson's career, beginning with his cult debut. 'Something worth mentioning is the status that some films have as "cult films"', Jackson wrote in a letter to the New Zealand Film Commission seeking investment for Bad Taste.
To understand the cult of Bad Taste you have to cast your eye wider than the film itself. That's the reason this book, in addition to looking at the film's production and distribution history, also voices the testimony of fans like Hamish Towgood, a Kiwi who saw the film when he was 13 and went on to set up the Ultimate Bad Taste website; and Jake West, a young British director whose second feature, Evil Aliens (2005), is a 'love letter' to 'old school horror' like Bad Taste.
Then there's Thomas Hartlage, who runs two German record labels and befriended Peter Jackson on a trip to New Zealand before organising and distributing the official Bad Taste soundtrack album; and the legion of fans that contribute to fanzines or participate in online bulletin boards and review sites, attend festival screenings and conventions.
Every one of them has found something special in Bad Taste, some quality worthy of reverence, and it is my task to understand quite what makes Bad Taste, a quintessentially New Zealand film, an object of cult devotion the world over.
(1) http://www.innovate.org.nz/speakers-notes/harley.html
(2) Critic and author Tom Shone goes further, suggesting in his history of the blockbuster that 'Jackson's career path has proved the exemplary one, with Bryan Singer, Guillermo Del Toro, Darren Aronofsky, Ang Lee, Sam Raimi, Chris Nolan all mixing up low budget indie success with stints at the helm of the big studio blockbusters' (2005: 311; emphasis added).
References:
- Belich, J. (2001) Paradise Reforged: A History of the New Zealanders from the 1880s to the Year 2000. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
- Elliott, M. A. (1918) The Frozen Meat Industry of New Zealand, New Zealand Journal of Science and Technology (May).
- Bart, P. (2006) BOFFO! How I Learned to Love the Blockbuster and Fear the Bomb. New York: Hyperion.
- Sibley, B. (2006) Peter Jackson: A Film-maker’s Journey. London: HarperCollinsEntertainment.
Text © Jim Barratt 2008. Courtesy of Wallflower Press.
Buy now!
Bad Taste can be purchased direct from Wallflower Press. It is available in the US through Columbia University Press, and is distributed in Australia & New Zealand by Woodslane.
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