Cast:
Donna Akersten (Lucille the Dog / Samantha the Cat / Dorothy the Sheep / Female Rabbit #1 / Chorus Girl #2 / Fitness Tape Voice), Stuart Devenie (Sebastian the Fox / Daisy the Cow / Sandy the Chicken / Cedric the Warthog / Eight Ball the Frog / Seymour the Elechicken / Female Rabbit #2 / Chorus Girl #1), Mark Hadlow (Robert the Hedgehog / Heidi the Hippo / Barry the Bulldog / Chorus Girl #3), Ross Jolly (Harry the Rabbit / Dennis the Aardvark / Abi Bargwan the Contortionist / Mr. Big the Whale / Pekingese / Crab 2 / Vietnamese Gophers 2), Peter Vere-Jones (Bletch the Walrus / Arthur the Worm / The Baker / Newspaper Mouse / The Announcer), Brian Sergent (Wynyard the Frog / Trevor the Rat / F. W. Fly the Fly / Dr. Quack the Duck / Jim the Frog / Chuck the Frog / The Spider / Vietnamese Gophers), and Mark Wright (Sid the Elephant / The Masked Masochist / Louie the Dog / Guppy the Fish / Poodle / Snake bartender / Crab 1 / Chorus Girl #4) Directed by Peter Jackson (#1486 - Bad Taste, #1507 - Heavenly Creatures, #1540 - King Kong [2005])
Review:
"You know, I do want to make the sort of films I like watching, so what I had to try and do with the Feebles is make the sort of puppet film that I would like to watch. That if I had to go down and watch a puppet film for an hour-and-a-half - what would I like to see?"
It is very strange to be so interested in the early years of a director rather than the stuff they are best known for. And yet, here we are with Peter Jackson, who had made five feature films in his native New Zealand prior to being hired for some sort of "Lord of the Rings" adaptation. If you thought Bad Taste (1987) was a weird little film, well, here's a fun curveball for you. The movie evolved from being thought of as something that could be its own little TV series into feature-length because of potential interest from Japanese investors; funding also came from the New Zealand Film Commission, although they were not particularly big on the film by the end to where they didn't even put themselves on the credits. The film was written by Peter Jackson. Danny Mulheron, Fran Walsh, and Stephen Sinclair. All the dialogue tracks were recorded prior to shooting, with Jackson personally being the one operating the camera. There were a handful of people responsible for the puppeteering, such as Mulheron also serving as the in-suit performer for Heidi the Hippo to with supervision of the puppeteering by Jonathon Acorn and Ramon Aguilar (for more clarification on how they did the puppet-work, one could click here or here). While it wasn't a big hit with audiences (making less than half of its reported $750,000 budget), it eventually attracted a cult following; the next film Jackson got to make was with Braindead (1992), which actually was planned to be done after Bad Taste but was postponed because of funding stepped out at the last second. The film later served as an inspiration for the script of another puppet-related film with The Happytime Murders (2018).
I'm sure you know the story: a behind-the-scenes look at a variety theatre troupe ready to put on a show who are wracked with affairs, drug-pushing, pornographic filmmaking, and more....it just happens to involve puppets. So yes, it is a bit off the road from something like The Muppet Show. It is delightfully vile in the ways that appeal greatly to my interests when it comes to executing amusement from committed voices and gags that are hit-and-miss in the nicest of ways. Oh sure, there are moments that are totally ridiculous to go along with a few slow moments, and I do get why some folks (read: the ones who aren't wimpy about gross stuff by default) won't be big on it, but I found it to be a pretty good 97 minutes to spend some time in the grime of it all. It throws the whole wall of cliches you could find in a backstage film about show business and runs with it, whether that involves a star potentially dying of a disease trying to go on (the punchline is one to run for), a guy trying to do his act while wracked with PTSD (complete with a homage to The Deer Hunter!), a somewhat there love story, and to top it all off, efforts to get a song into the show...about sodomy. Well, that and what you might see on the cover involving a gun, but the less said, the better. It probably goes without saying that the voices are pretty good for making an atmosphere of plenty come out through just a handful of people, particularly with Hadlow, who gets to play a melodramatic hippo and a cliche-bland hedgehog all in one. Sergent probably gets the best stuff to do, since the fly he voices cracks me up each time with its craven sound that goes right in with a do-anything journalist, and to say nothing of the Peter Lorre impersonation with a pervert rat, that is pretty silly. In general, calling it crude doesn't even feel like a critique, because it might as well be a badge of honor to make such a ridiculous movie work so well in terms of mayhem and the occasional effective gag. Jackson did not stumble much for his second film effort here, and I salute having made time to see it for myself, and if you are fine with a hodgepodge of weird humor here and there, you might be for it too.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
Exit stage right and enter the world of October.
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