Meet the Feebles * (1989, Danny Mulheron, Donna Akersten, Stuart Devenie) – Classic Movie Review 8417

‘From the creators of Bad Taste, comes a film with no taste at all!’ Director Peter Jackson’s warped, outrageous and disgusting 1989 New Zealand musical black comedy cult movie Meet the Feebles establishes his horror credentials. It stars Danny Mulheron as Heidi the Hippo, and the voices of Donna Akersten, Stuart Devenie, Mark Hadlow, Ross Jolly, Peter Vere-Jones, Mark Wright and Brian Sergent.

Distinguished (and marketed) as possibly the sickest movie of all time, Meet the Feebles is the missing link between The Muppet Show and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, replete with soft furry puppet characters excreting gallons of bodily fluids.

A cuddly hedgehog called Robert (Mark Hadlow) joins the fabulous Feebles Revue theatre troupe of animal-figured puppets plus some suited performers, picked up for a syndicated television show The Meet The Feebles Variety Hour. Robert falls in love with another newcomer, Lucille the poodle, only to discover that the show is a den of sex, drugs, and perversity.

Despite this promising premise, the script opts for juvenile offensiveness instead of humour, and what could have been hilarious is just boring. Director Jackson managed to top even this pinnacle of bad taste with the far superior Braindead [Dead Alive] (1992).

Meet the Feebles is written by Jackson, Fran Walsh, Stephen Sinclair and Danny Mulheron as the first Jackson film co-written by his future wife Walsh, co-writer for all his subsequent films.

It was to be made for $750,000, a low budget especially considering the time-consuming process of working with puppets, but it went over budget and schedule. Even so, some scenes, including a Vietnam flashback parody of The Deer Hunter, were funded by crew members, and filmed in secret as The Frogs of War. The New Zealand Film Commission granted the production two-thirds of its $750,000 budget, but relations soured and the Commission removed its credit from the film.

The film was conceived as part of a TV series but became a cinema feature after Japanese investors proposed to expand it and the script was hastily re-written, with the dialogue recorded before the shoot.

There are no real-life human characters in the film. Jackson has a cameo as an audience member dressed as an alien from Bad Taste. Every vehicle seen is a variation on the Morris Minor, including a specially constructed limousine.

A box office flop, grossing only NZ$80,000, Meet the Feebles won a cult following after Jackson’s success with The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The music is composed by Peter Dasent, released by Q D K Media in 1991.

The film was banned in Ireland.

During his acceptance speech at the 2004 Academy Awards, Jackson joked that Meet the Feebles had been ‘wisely overlooked by the Academy’.

In January 2019, Jackson said he would be glad to return to his horror roots, saying he would be ‘Very happy to be disgusting again’.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8417

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