Here’s some great news for fans of Peter Jackson’s early work, as the New Zealand filmmaker has revealed to Empire that he is working on 4K restorations of the ‘splatstick’ comedy-horrors Bad Taste and Braindead (a.k.a. Dead Alive), along with the musical black comedy Meet the Feebles.
“Anything from those films that is available is, like, 1990s Telecine things, which is the best that we had,” said Jackson when asked about the films and their current (lack of) availability. “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.”
1987’s Bad Taste marked the feature debut of Jackson, who also starred in the film as part of a four-man paramilitary force looking to fend off an invasion of a small village by an alien force looking to harvest humans for their intergalactic fast food franchise. He followed this in 1989 with the puppet satire Meet the Feebles, and the 1992 zombie comedy Braindead, which was released under the title of Dead Alive in North America. All three have since achieved cult status.
Jackson most recently directed the fascinating World War I documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, which premiered at the BFI London Film Festival earlier this month [read our review here], and has also co-written and produced December’s Mortal Engines adaptation.
