How They Began: BAD TASTE & DUEL

A great many filmmakers have gotten their starts in the horror genre; it's especially visceral nature and devoted fan-base make it an ideal starting point for young and unproven talents.  It can be made on the cheap, doesn't need high profile actors, and if the drama and characters leave something to be desired, audiences are likely to be more forgiving as long as the chills and gore keep on coming.  Sam Raimi (first film: THE EVIL DEAD), James Cameron (first film: PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING) and Guillermo del Toro (first film: CRONOS) are just a few of the major filmmakers who got their first break in scaring folks, but even a couple of the biggest names in the industry, the big name-brand movie moguls, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson made their names on the story of a killer semi truck and the story of an alien fast food chain, respectively.

BAD TASTE  (HORROR-COMEDY/SCI-FI, 1987) 
Directed by Peter Jackson
Starring: Peter Jackson, Terry Potter, Pete O'Herne, Mike Minett, Craig Smith, Doug Wren
Not Rated (NC-17 level; extreme horror violence and gore).
92 minutes
SCAREmeter: 2/10 (may scare little kids, but hey, what doesn't?)
GOREmeter: 10/10 (has a reputation as one of the goriest movies ever; not always realistic, but really in-your-face over-the-top-and-back-again blood 'n' guts)
LAUGHmeter: 4/10
OVERALL: 2/4 
At age 26, Peter Jackson completed his first film, a labor of four years, made on a shoestring budget (reportedly around NZ$150,000-NZ$200,000) in his hometown of Pukerua Bay, New Zealand with his friends and co-workers, mostly on weekends, while working as a full-time photo-engraver at a local newspaper.  Jackson wrote, directed, produced, photographed, co-edited and starred in the film, plus designed the relatively extensive makeup and special effects.
For those who need a refresher, Jackson became a household name when his three-part film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of Rings made him the most-celebrated filmmaker of the 2000s and won him three Academy Awards.  THE LORD OF THE RINGS is vastly more sophisticated than BAD TASTE, but the roots are visible in his staging, use of rugged landscapes and economical makeup and special effects.

Peter Jackson as Robert, eating brains with a spoon in BAD TASTE.

The story reflects Jackson's twisted sense of humor; an alien race invades Earth with plans to harvest humans to serve as the newest product of their intergalactic fast food chain, and they're starting out with the little town of Kaihoro (kai being the Maori word for "food", horo meaning "town" or "village").  Humanity's last line of defense from becoming alien snack-burgers is the Astro Investigation and Defense Service (or, ahem, AIDS) agents Derek (Peter Jackson), Frank (Mike Minett), Ozzy (Terry Potter) and Barry (Peter O'Herne).  Then they basically spend the rest of the movie killing aliens in the most outrageously gory ways possible.
Jackson himself, who's had cameos in most of his films (most notably munching on a carrot in THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING), actually does some substantial acting in BAD TASTE, playing two distinctly different roles; the dimwitted alien Robert, who looks a lot like the bearded, long-haired guy we're familiar with, and the nerdy Derek, clean-shaven and bespectacled.
It's a cult classic with a lot of devoted fans, but it is undeniably the work of an amateur and a specific (bad) taste.  There are inspired moments of humor and action, and it's truly impressive what he and his friends were able to do with so little money or experience, but it's also cheesy, messy and basically an excuse for goofy splatter effects.  It doesn't matter really though, after all, the poster is of a butt-ugly alien holding a machine gun and flipping the middle finger (because BAD TASTE has to be in good taste to display in most major retailers, they added a second finger to the image for DVD covers), so, you know, it is what it is.


DUEL  (SUSPENSE/THRILLER, 1971) 
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring: Dennis Weaver, Jaqueline Scott, Carey Loftin, Tim Herbert, Eddie Firestone, Lou Frizzell, Eugene Dynarski, Shirley O'Hara
Rated PG for unspecified reasons (intense situations, some action/peril and brief language).
91 minutes
SCAREmeter: 4.5/10 (not necessarily scary, but pretty intense)
GOREmeter: 2.5/10 (a couple brief instances of blood)
LAUGHmeter: 2/10
OVERALL: 3.5/4

DUEL is considered Steven Spielberg's feature directorial debut.  At 17, Spielberg made an amateur feature-length film called FIRELIGHT, about people being abducted by extra-terrestrials, and screened the film at the local Phoenix Little Theater (a non-profit community theater) in Phoenix, Arizona.  The film's musical score was recorded by the local high school band and much of the cast was from the high school drama club.  The film cost $500 and grossed $501 dollars.  Two reels of the film, which Spielberg used as an early resume, are lost, but only a few minutes of footage are available to the public.  His first professional film was the 26-minute AMBLIN', which he later named his production company Amblin Entertainment after, accompanied by a logo depicting Elliot and E.T.'s bike ride past the moon from E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL.  Early in his professional directing career, Spielberg directed television episodes, including for Marcus Welby, M.D., Night Gallery and Columbo, as well a TV movie episode of The Name of the Game.
DUEL was actually a TV movie, produced as an ABC Movie of the Week, but Universal then bought it for a theatrical release in foreign markets and a limited theatrical release in the United States, making it Spielberg's first theatrically-released feature film.  On television, it ran 73 minutes, which was too short to play in major European markets, so Spielberg was given two more days of shooting to add several scenes (the initial production had already gone 3 days over, a trend of going over-budget and over-schedule that characterized Spielberg's early, but nonetheless, successful films).
It's the story of David Mann (Dennis Weaver), an emasculated man of the early 1970s, driving his red Plymouth Valiant along a California highway to a business meeting.  He and his wife (Jacqueline Scott) had a fight the night before, after he passively dismissed a man's aggressive sexual advances on her at a party.  Coming up behind the rusty hulk of tanker truck spewing a thick haze of exhaust, David passes it, wholly unaware of what he's just begun.  The truck accelerates to pull ahead and then resumes a leisurely pace right in front of David's car.  David pulls ahead again, and the truck blasts its horn at him.  Annoyed, eventually he allows the truck to pass, but it then drives ahead slower than before, and blocks the two lanes each time David tries to get past.  It becomes clear that the truck is not going to let David pass and get away with it, and if it can, the truck will kill David, prompting him to pass when there's an oncoming car out of David's view, or pushing him forward at a railroad stop as the train passes.  When he makes a stop, the truck waits for him, and when he takes a detour, the truck follows.
Most of the action in DUEL takes place between David in his Plymouth and the truck on the Californian desert roads, but for as small as it is compared to what Spielberg would do later, it's as hypnotic as going for a long drive on one of those roads yourself.  It's an amazingly easy film to slip right into. 
The driver (played by Carey Loftin) is never seen beyond an arm hanging out the window, or his boots seen beneath his rig at a fueling station; the truck, like the shark in Spielberg's blockbuster JAWS three years later, is less of a character and more of a force of nature.  It's not the driver that's important, the driver is incidental- the point is the big rusty 1955 Peterbilt 281.  As Spielberg would again do in JAWS, DUEL is the story of the everyman reasserting his masculinity in a world that's driven him to the brink.  It is a menace that has presented itself without empathy, without mercy, without reason; it is purely a monster.  DUEL is JAWS' much less famous cousin.