Bad Taste

Alternate titles : Trash - Total Nausea

Tagline : "One thing the aliens hadn't counted on was Derek, and Derek's don't run".

A surprising cult hit, which even more surprisingly was from a pre-"Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson (yes, him). The film takes place in a small coastal town in Jackson's native New Zealand, where a specialist government unit, the Astro Investigation and Defence Service (giving them the somewhat unfortunate acronym of AIDS) have been called in to investigate the disappearance of all the towns folk, following a UFO sighting.

They soon discover the town has been taken over by aliens, who have killed the population, and turned them into their favourite brand of fast food. What starts as a routine investigation, ends up in a massive gun fight as they discover the alien's space ship, cunningly disguised as a nearby building, and a massive battle erupts.

The amount of blood and gore in this film is quite phenomenal, even by Clive Barkers, or George Romero's standards. But, it's presented in such a way that it just makes you laugh hysterically. There's vomit eating, brain eating, cannibalism, exploding heads, EXPLODING SHEEP!!!!!!! Terrific stuff.

Filmed on a shoestring budget, this one went down a storm at the Cannes film festival, which took the cast and crew by complete surprise as it started life as a pet project and was never originally intended for general release. Whilst the acting and special effects aren't quite on the same par with mainstream Hollywood blockbusters, this film is an absolute scream and if you haven't seen it already, do so at once. I cannot recommend it enough. Prepare to be grossed out like never before (Lord of the Rings fans are bound to be shocked).

Overall Marks : 8/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• Alternate tag lines... "Watch out aliens...here comes Derek", "The Bastards have Landed", "Crumbs Crunchy Delights", "Human Meat for Intergalactic Hamburgers".
• The film took over four years to complete, because they could only film at weekends, when the crew had time off work.
• All the props and special effects may look effective, but where all done very cheaply. The alien masks where made from special DIY moulding kits. The guns were all made out of pipe and bits of plastic glued together, and the gunfire was added on after filming (the actors had to shake the prop guns to simulate firing). Peter Jackson also constructed his own counterweighted steady-cam device for this film, which only cost him $15.
• All the dialogue in the film was dubbed, because the original sound tapes went missing.
• Craig Smith, who played Giles, got married and divorced in the 4 year time frame it took to shoot the film.
• The film was banned in the state of Queensland, in neighbouring Australia, right up until the early 90's when the Queensland censorship board was disbanded.
• To film the scene where Derek's van swerves off the road and runs over one of the aliens, the cameraman had to sit on the bonnet with the camera, because they couldn't get hold of a camera mount. Unfortunately, the van crashed into a tree stump hidden in the long grass, and the cameraman and camera both went flying. Fortunately, both survived the ordeal unscathed.
• There was a documentary on the making of this film entitled "Good Taste made Bad Taste". This was shown by the BBC, after the film aired on BBC 2 back in 1996. To date, the only other place this documentary can be seen is on a special limited edition US R1 DVD by Anchor Bay (or you can try Googling some video sharing sites).

Other Recomendations

A-Z REVIEWS | REVIEWS INDEX | HOME