Earlier this year, I watched Dead Alive aka Braindead for the first time. Before that, I had only been familiar with director Peter Jackson as the mind behind famed Hollywood blockbusters like Lord of the Rings and King Kong, movies which I enjoyed for what they were and can’t fault them that much. My exposure to Dead Alive taught me something important though, it taught me that Peter Jackson doesn’t need more of a budget, he needs LESS of a budget because Peter Jackson with a budget gives us good blockbusters. Peter Jackson without a budget gives us Dead Alive and the subject of our review today, Bad Taste, a movie about aliens attacking a small town in New Zealand.

That up there was pretty much the plot. Aliens attack a small town in New Zealand, and some of the boys show up to help fight them off, absurdly gory action schlocky horror commences. Like many of Peter Jackson’s works, Bad Taste deftly combines multiple genres, blending action, comedy, and horror, freely switching between each genre, sometimes even during scenes. What unites the movie is the sense of fun that Jackson brings to it, not only as a director but also as a writer. And actor. And Producer. And the Special Effects guy. Okay, so Jackson did almost everything, which makes me love it even more. Bad Taste was a labor of love, and you can see that from every lovingly rendered explosion and gore shot, every silly alien design and absurd plot point, these are all to entertain and Bad Taste accomplishes that amazingly well.

It’s tempting to say that Bad Taste is a dumb movie. After all, the gore effects are completely over the top, the jokes are often juvenile, and most of the film is prolonged gunfight sequences. That would be a quick judgment though, because when you move beyond the low-budget limitations, you can look at the writing and see a plotline that is quite unnerving and wouldn’t be out of place in a more serious movie if handled slightly differently. When I look at that in combination with the startling lack of dependence on the three-act structure, I get a picture of Jackson as someone who knew, even then, exactly what his limitations were, what his skills were, and how he could maximize entertainment value even with all those limitations in mind. If that isn’t a reason to watch a movie, I don’t know what is.