Bad Taste,Braindead, andMeet the Feeblesare all getting 4K restorations byPeter Jacksonand his team. Before Jackson went big time withThe Lord of the Ringsfranchise, the director was into making some pretty awesome low-budget horror/comedy films dubbed “splatstick.” All three of the aforementioned movies are beloved by horror fans, who have been waiting years for some high-quality transfers. Jackson admits that he has been thinking about taking on the massive project for quite some time now.
Bad TasteandBraindead, akaDead Alivein North America, are both dark horror comedies whileMeet the Feeblesis ablack twisted comedy musical. The quality on the DVDs of all three films leave a lot to be desired, but Peter Jackson admits that they’ve already made some decent headway on restoring the films. Jackson had this to say about the 4K restoration onBad Taste,Braindead, andMeet the Feebles.
“Anything from those films that is available is, like, 1990s Telecine things, which is the best that we had. I just haven’t re-released them because, if I do, I want them to look really good. We’ve actually done some experiments. They look bloody fantastic. They look like they’re shot on 35mm. So yeah, what we’ll do now is… get really nice 4K copies of these fully restored and back out into circulation again.”
Peter Jackson doesn’t do anything these days unless he can put 100 percent into the project, which explains why he hasn’t had a chance to get to theBad Taste,Braindead, andMeet the Feebles4K restorations. Now that he and his team have their “experiments” complete, it seems that work will begin soon on getting some definitive versions of the films out on4K Blu-ray. The director recently took 100-year old World War I footage and restored it to make hisThey Shall Not Grow Olddocumentary.
Bad Tasteis Peter Jackson’s first feature-length film, which he directed, wrote, edited, produced, photographed, co-starred in, and did the majority of the makeup and special effects as well. The movie was quickly banned in Queensland, Australia upon its release in 1987 (1989 in North America). Jackson used the ban as a badge of honor and used it to promote the gross-out movie. The bizarre dark musicalMeet the Feeblescame out next in 1989 and gained better reviews thanBad Taste, but was a failure at the box office. The musical has since become a cult classic.
Braindeadcame out in 1992 and was widely hailed as Peter Jackson’s best film to date by critics. The movie constantly makes it into lists of the best horror movies of all time. 4K restorations of these classic movies is long overdue, so this news should be pretty exciting for Jackson and horror fans who have been waiting for a decent quality release. Peter Jackson revealed the news on the Empire Film podcast.
