"Braindead"! Peter Jackson's second film.
His first?
"Bad Taste"!
Yup, Sir Peter Jackson of "Lord of the Rings" fame, Knight, Oscar-winner, Kiwi-Extraordinaire, started out life as a Schlock-Horror film maker of the first order.
Baby Jane gave me Peter Jackson's biography for Christmas, and I must tell you that it's riveting stuff - all this extraordinary "glory wrenched from the jaws of neglect" type of thing - so no matter how much you may abhor the content, you have it from me that the story behind these films is also extraordinary.
How it goes is that Peter Jackson got his first camera when he was about 7 and, living way out on the edge of dangerous cliffs and thus "too far out of town to have friends come play" (as if we can't see through that one), he spent his leisure time remaking "King Kong" in clay-mation.
Eventually, as a teenager, he tired of slo-mo, so, for all the years through high school, he got his friends and the local townsfolk round to make live-action schlocky horror films.
However, no one in their right minds would call these "films" because they were simply plotless, storyless scenes, completely unlinked and just built around themes - vampires, aliens, killer-rats, killer-babies, zombies. In fact, for Young Peter film-making never went any further than inventing and creating spectacular deaths, the more spectacular the better.
And it was such a laugh doing it, just about everyone in the neighbourhood wanted to get on board and were forever suggesting and "bagsing" the type of ways they wanted to die: local farmers coming up to him in town and saying things like "Can I have my heart ripped out through my stomach by a zombie?" "Can a horde of vampires suck all the blood out of my body and leave me flat on the carpet?".
And whenever they'd suggest a really good death, Young Peter would figure out how to make it happen and then hand-make all the props at his kitchen table before taking whoeveritwas out to shoot their "Dream Death".
Fun, huh! Don't you so wish you lived somewhere near the Jackson's place in the 1980s?
But then, after finishing school, with all these skills learned through trial-and-error, he tried to get into the New Zealand film industry but no one would touch him, so he 'settled' and got a job as a type-setter in a newspaper office.
But Film kept calling to him, so all week at work he'd think about spectacular ways to kill people and every Saturday he'd be at his kitchen table making the props, and every Sunday friends would come around and they'd play out the latest death for his cameras - either vampires, aliens, killer-rats, killer-babies, zombies - and he'd edit his footage weeknights, while spending his days thinking about the next spectacular death.
Eventually he had more footage of spectacular deaths than he knew what to do with, so he applied for grants to turn it into a proper film.
No one in the new Zealand film world wanted to know! He was trashed and black-banned in every corner and his name was only spoken in the darkest and grimmest tones and usually coupled with insults ... although no one despised him as a prop maker! Frequently there'd be something in the footage he was shlocking around that made folks in the industry sit up and take note, and often they'd say "Can you make me one of those?" and he always did because ... well, even if it's only folks "stealing your thunder" (referencing here the origin of that phrase) ("They rejected my play but stole my thunder") ... you're still working in the industry, aren't you!
And so, with no help from the industry and only his wages to spend on making the film, for years this went on and on with every weekend another spectacular death ... and more and more folks begging to come on board to be killed spectacularly ... so his film was plot-less and consisted of endless, mindless and unmotivated deaths by the hundreds.
But then, out of the blue, Dr Who - Jon Pertwee - while holidaying in New Zealand, saw them at it and said "This looks like fun. Can I be killed too?"
And so Young Peter, anxious to oblige an actor he'd been watching and loving for years, wrote him a spectacular part ("I kick arse for the Lord") and they filmed it the following weekend ...
... let me see if I can find it for you:
Gosh, I do love youtube.
What to do with a famous Shakespearean actor
who wants to be in your film.
... and suddenly the entire world changed for Young Peter Jackson.
Jon Pertwee was only in that footage they filmed that night, but suddenly word was out that DR WHO had attached to the film so, on the grounds "If Jon Pertwee likes it, it must be good", everyone in the New Zealand Film Commission wanted to fund the project.
Suddenly Peter Jackson had more money than he knew what to do with, so he left work in order to carve films out of his miles of footage. The vampire deaths? Well, that was stuff from very early on so it had to go. But the aliens footage? Mmmm, he could get something out of that with very little additional filming. So that became his first film, "Bad Taste".
Oh boy, it was not well received! Endless "OMG, what have we done?" and "How do we explain this grant to the higher-ups?" Yup, the New Zealand Film Commission saw it and shuddered ... but when it was shown at Cannes it sold to twelve countries.
Buoyed up by this, Young Peter went back to his footage and carved out a second film, this time from his Zombie, killer-baby, killer-rat footage, and it too came together with very little additional filming: "Braindead" 'starring Jon Pertwee'! And it too sold well overseas, but it wasn't until it was named #13 in "Top 50 Iconic Zombie Films of the 20th Century" that Hollywood sat up and took notice.
And the rest, as they say, is history!
But can you imagine what would have happened if not for the chance encounter with a famous British actor? And if that said actor hadn't had such a wonderful sense of humour? And if said actor hadn't donated a night's work entirely free of charge?
It's quite a horrible thought, isn't it!
Celebrity endorsement! There's nothing quite like it! And don't I just HATE that!
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