the man

When he first appeared before us, as the daft alien-chaser Derek in his debut Bad Taste, Peter Jackson resembled nothing so much as Dr. Who played by Rick Moranis. Time has thickened him, though, and the figure you see at right (in a 2001 photo) looks more and more like Stanley Kubrick every year. Jackson's got the same wild mane of hair, the same beard, and, increasingly, the same filmmaking obsessiveness.

Throw piles of money at Jackson -- it doesn't matter; his films still have the same eager-beaver momentum as his first backyard 16mm movies. Unlike Sam Raimi, who went to Hollywood and lost his sense of play (let's hope only temporarily), Jackson made Hollywood come to him -- all his films, including his mammoth Lord of the Rings trilogy, have been shot in his native New Zealand. And he hasn't lost his sense of play, not even when given the keys to one of the biggest gambles in movie history and a budget (for all three films) of around $280 million.

Jackson is moving up the ladder, but he's still an inveterate film geek, an unapologetic horror fan (he still nurtures a desire to remake King Kong), and, deep down, the same guy who played two equally unflattering roles in Bad Taste -- one of which required him to cinch a belt around his head to keep his brains in, the other of which had him barfing blue muck into a bowl for aliens to slurp up. This is a guy who, during the busiest publicity ride of his life, still made time to give an interview to Fangoria magazine, without whose influence Jackson might not have his name on New Line's biggest franchise. This, in short, is my kind of director, and he should be yours, too.

the films

bad taste

When watching Jackson's debut, keep in mind that a mere seven years later he was nominated for an Oscar -- which makes this cheerfully repulsive alien-cannibal comedy even funnier. It certainly makes good on its title. Ravenous extraterrestrials ("No glowing fingers on these bastards," growls Jackson as Derek, member of the Astral Investigation and Defense Service) land in New Zealand, assume human form, and commence converting the locals into fast food. It's up to our boys in the A.I.D.S. ("We've got to change that name," one member grouses) to put a stop to it.

Twenty-two when he first began shooting this on weekends in 1983, Jackson scraped together $400,000, gathered a bunch of friends from his newspaper job, and shot in 16mm, doing half the editing, cinematography, producing, and gore effects (which he learned from the pages of Fangoria) himself. It was here that Jackson inaugurated the style of "splatstick" (partly inspired by such sanguinary Monty Python sketches as "Sam Peckinpah's Salad Days") that would serve him well in his next two features. At the time, Jackson said he didn't want to presume to be a pretender to the thrones of Sam Raimi, George Romero, or Stuart Gordon; but in Bad Taste he outsplats all three, crafting the ultimate "Bunch of Guys Get Together with a Camera and Set Out to Make the Grossest, Coolest Movie Ever" project. Like Raimi, Jackson was never a horror director so much as a comedy director -- even the most disgusting passages ("Aren't I lucky," beams an alien as he sucks down a bowl of steaming vomit, "I got a chunky bit") and scenes of ultra-violence are timed for laughs, not shock.

meet the feebles

Jackson's sophomore (some would say sophomoric, but don't listen to 'em) effort -- unreleased in America until 1995, after Heavenly Creatures had won him some semi-mainstream cred -- is an ecstatically twisted satire of show business in general and the Muppets in particular (Lisa Hensen allegedly stormed out of a screening in disgust). The Feebles, like Kermit and the gang, are puppets with their own TV show. Jackson puts a realistic, caustic spin on the whimsical backstage Kermit/Miss Piggy squabbles, and at a certain point -- this being a Peter Jackson movie -- the action gets disgusting, indefensible, and, of course, hilarious.

There's a hippo diva with an eating problem and a Vietnam-vet frog with a smack habit (gee, guess which Muppets they're supposed to be?); there's a pornographer rat, a drug-dealing walrus, a tabloid-journalist fly (who merrily scoops up spoonfuls of shit), a highly sexed rabbit who fears he has AIDS, and a cow who stars in "nasal porn" with an elephant. The heroes are Robert (or "Wobert"), a bashful hedgehog, and Lucille, a beautiful poodle he falls in love with; mercifully, Jackson always gives us at least some sympathetic characters, without whom his movies might be too much to take. Jackson mostly holds back on the gore till the end, but in the meantime he doesn't skimp on every other conceivable bodily fluid. If you ever wanted to see puppet snot, piss, shit, puke, and jizz, this is your movie.

Jackson even throws in some lyrical images -- a giant spider whose legs encircle a car; the reflection of stagelight off a puddle of blood -- and he manages to make you feel sorry for some of these characters wallowing in squalor (the 'Nam-vet frog is used for a goof on The Deer Hunter, but the movie's sympathy for him is real). Jackson's lack of condescension towards his "stars" lifts this high above the dirty-puppet novelty movie it might have been. This is the sort of depraved madness that plays best with a large, appreciative audience, so don't pass up the rare chance to see it in a theater at a midnight show -- or at least on video with a group of like-minded sickos.

dead alive

Before 1993, I never thought any movie could supplant The Re-Animator as the craziest, goriest horror movie ever made. Well, any director who wants to wrest the new title from Dead Alive (called Brain Dead in other countries) has his work cut out for him. A cackling cartoon absurdist, Jackson devises more ways to deform, mutilate, and destroy the human body than you ever imagined. His work here is explosively funny; after the shock of the first few minutes you just give up and laugh in awe. You're not laughing at real death most of the time anyway, since most of the casualties are crazed zombies. (One can imagine George Romero bowing silently toward New Zealand in tribute after seeing this.)

Set in 1950s New Zealand, the movie follows mama's boy Lionel (Timothy Balme) and his sweetheart Paquita (Diana Penalver) as they struggle to contain hordes of spastic undead. There are a couple of plot threads, but mostly the film is a matter of Jackson gleefully escalating the disgusting outrages. The difference between Jackson and most other directors who try to top themselves is that Jackson can actually do it. As usual, it's also chock full of Jackson's Grand-Guignol-by-way-of-Monty-Python wit; great quotable lines abound, including the famous "I kick arse for the Lord!", "What? No pudding??" and the classic exchange "Your mom ate my dog!" "Not all of it." Towards the climax, when Lionel picks up a lawnmower and wades into a houseful of gibbering zombies, the movie goes completely nuts and stays there. The ultimate party video.

heavenly creatures

Jackson tested the waters of respectability (well, almost) in this brilliantly fevered true-life account of a famous New Zealand murder. It's 1953, and Pauline Parker (Melanie Lynskey) and Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet), two alienated teenagers, form an intense bond based on rhapsodic fantasy and art-pop icons -- Orson Welles, Mario Lanza. Their narrow-minded parents think their friendship is unhealthy, which is both true and untrue. Jackson raises the disturbing question, How much is too much? Acting out various romances, the girls cuddle and kiss; Jackson doesn't shy away from the lesbian implications -- he embraces them. And when the parents conspire to separate the girls and Pauline hatches a plot to kill her mother, Jackson shows us that the scheme isn't just bratty pique. He brings us inside the girls' obsessions, which is not the same as justifying what those obsessions led to.

The movie works up to the murder, and Jackson gives it the proper moral weight; he doesn't present it as the girls' triumph. (How could it be, when it resulted in both their arrests and their subsequent, court-ordered lifelong separation?) The girls go too far even before the murder, wrapping themselves in a fantasy world from which there is no sane way out. Jackson could conceivably faulted for creating an utterly subjective account: The adults are generally crudely drawn caricatures of disapproval and bigotry, except for Pauline's doomed mother, played honestly by Sarah Peirse, who suggests that this woman's forbidding priggishness comes from her own resentment at paths not taken. The final reel, in which the girls corner the mother in the woods after Pauline has gently encouraged her to have another piece of cake, is remarkably sad and unlike anything in Jackson's previous giggly splatterthons. Jackson opens the film boldly, too -- a farcically cheerful travelogue of Christchurch that rudely shoves us into post-murder chaos. Not long before the movie's release, mystery writer Anne Perry revealed herself to be Juliet Hulme (perhaps figuring it would come out anyway); the ads quickly capitalized on it. If you enjoy this movie, seek out the American indie film Fun, made around the same time.

forgotten silver

Together with Costa Botes, Jackson pulled the wool over New Zealand's eyes with this pitch-perfect mockumentary, which clocks in at just under an hour and fooled a lot of viewers when it got aired on NZ television. It's of course vastly more funny if you know it's all fake, though it'd be interesting to watch it with someone who's not in on the joke. The conceit is that Jackson, playing himself and narrating, has discovered some old reels of film in a shed -- the lost works of New Zealand film pioneer Colin McKenzie, who according to Jackson did everything in movies before anyone else. We see copious examples of McKenzie's ouevre (personal favorite: the world's first tracking shot), all immaculately staged, shot, and probably trampled upon to look like actual period footage. As if that weren't enough, Jackson brings in expert testimony from the likes of Leonard Maltin, Sam Neill, and Harvey Weinstein, all of whom attest to McKenzie's visionary genius.

Quite aside from being perhaps the most elaborate prank in Jackson's career to date (or since), Forgotten Silver is a brilliant piece of moviemaking in and of itself; Jackson obviously relishes the opportunity to "re-enact" McKenzie's "work," dabbling in the language of silent film and paying tribute to the birth of cinema. This is easily the least-known must-see film in Jackson's filmography. Along with Heavenly Creatures (and, to a lesser extent, Dead Alive and Meet the Feebles), it proved Jackson's skill at creating an older or alien world so believable in every detail that you never question it (which may explain why so many New Zealanders fell for the hoax); this of course would come in handy when it came time for Jackson to get to work on Middle-Earth.