Peter Jackson has indeed come a long way since the days of baking latex heads in his mothers oven. An only child born on Halloween, 1961 on the New Zealand coast, Jackson began experimenting with film when his parents bought a basic Super8 camera in 1969. Inspired by the comic antics of Monty Python and Buster Keaton, and the inventive effects and fantasy scenarios of Thunderbirds, King Kong and especially stopmotion pioneer Ray Harryhausen, Jackson produced a number of shorts throughout his teens, experimenting with a slapdash mix of homemade models, stopmotion animation, broad comedy and special effects that would later become his stockintrade.It was a practical grounding that was largely responsible for the success of his first three features. In 1981, Jackson acquired a 16mm camera and began to work up the idea for a lowbudget film that would showcase his talents to the wider world. Lacking professional contacts or technical expertise, Jackson simply decided to do everything directing, producing, and scripting his project, as well as taking the lead role of hapless Derek. Over four years from 1983 to 1987, working at a local newspaper by day, cobbling together the necessary special effects and costumes by night, and filming guerrillastyle at weekends, Jackson, along with likeminded friends, began to patch together the film that would become both a cult classic and his unintended passport to notoriety: the grotesque, gory and very funny Bad Taste 1987.

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