Good Taste Made Bad Taste

Short Film (Excerpts) – 1988

This documentary showcases some of the tricks of the trade used by Peter Jackson in the making of his first feature — the aliens-amok-in-Makara splatter classic, Bad Taste. Compiled following the film's 1988 Cannes market screening, it's framed around an extensive interview with a 25-year-old Jackson at his parents’ Pukerua Bay home. These excerpts offer fascinating insight into his ingenuity: from building a DIY Steadicam, to the making of the infamous sheep-obliterating rocket launcher scene, to PJ musing on the impetus that being an only child provided him.

I was thinking of ideas that were Hollywood ‘big’ … and I had a little Super 8 camera that couldn’t shoot sound … and I was dying to do animation [but] I didn’t have a single frame control. I’d just have to press the trigger for a short burst …
– Peter Jackson on his early filmmaking forays