Day 20: Meet the Feebles (1989)

I'd heard a lot of rumours about Peter Jackson's early work, and I'm pleased sad able to confirm that these are absolutely true. Serves me right for believing an appreciation for the work of Parker and Stone meant I was unshockable, I suppose, because now I have seen things that I will never be able to unsee.

Imagine that John Waters and Quentin Tarantino were Muppets, and that they had sex and somehow managed to make a baby. That baby would be Meet the Feebles, the most relentlessly tasteless piece of cinema I've ever seen (and I've seen Hop).

The viewing experience is hard to describe, but if I was pushed I'd guess that it was probably akin to slowly drowning in a vat full of a mixture of other people's septic bodily fluids; utterly revolting, yes, but some small part of you can't help laughing in incredulity at the sheer unlikely excess of it all.

It would be nice to say I discerned within Feebles the seed (possibly a bad word choice, under the circumstances) of the man who went on to direct Heavenly Creatures and all those Tolkien adaptations, but the only link I really noticed was the same ethos of Go big, or go home.

Feebles was made on a shoestring budget. It looks awful, and the acting and scripting are pretty dire, too. It is, however, completely unlike anything else out there. I'm not ashamed to say that it was too much for me to take, but on balance, I'm glad it's out there.