The no-budget movie that started
Peter Jackson's career as a film
director. It took about four years of
off and on shooting (the whole
thing apperently started as a joke anyway) with a camera that had to
be wound up by hand every thirty seconds. The story is that a gang of
extraterrestrial meat merchants have come to earth to harvest human
flesh which is to be sold to
fast food restaurants across the
galaxy and it's up to a team of alien investigators (think
New
Zealand's answer to
X-Files but with more guns) to put a stop to
it. Not only does it feature
chainsaws, there's also
exploding sheep, eating of brains, lots of blood and gore and fun for
the whole family. When you're in the right mood, this is an
incredibly funny movie.
With some help from the New Zealand Film Commission, the film was
released in 1987 and became a true cult classic. Jackson moved on to
direct films like Meet the Feebles and Brain Dead. He is also
doing the upcoming movie on Lord of the Rings. Now, this
could be interesting...
Fun facts about the movie:
- Jackson stars in at least two roles in the movie: as Derek the
investigator ("I'm a Derek. And Dereks don't run.") and the
particularly stupid alien who gets a hammer to fight with when the
others get sledgehammers. These two characters fights each other on
top of a cliff at one point.
- The reason that the aliens heads are the shape they are is that
they had to fit into Ma Jacksons oven when they were being created.
- All weapons in the movie were made out of bits of paper, metal and
wood. For obvious reasons, the film crew could not use ammo in these
weapons. Instead, Jackson went through each frame of film where a
weapon was fired and punched little holes in the film with a needle.