Meet the Feebles (1995)

From Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, a movie so vile, disgusting, off-putting and depraved that it's kind of brilliant. Meet the Feebles is Jackson's second feature-length film. And it makes you wonder how such a man could ever end up directing one of the most successful movie trilogies in history. But at the same time it kind of makes sense in twisted sort of way.Meet the Feebles is a puppet animation. It's about a variety show which is beginning to catch success. It follows the various artists, stage hands, managers and hanger-ons during the shows and between them, introducing us to their lives, habits and mannerisms. And it's one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen. It's perverted beyond reason. Most of the actors engage in vile sexual acts, the janitor shoots pornographic movies in the basement with the full approval of the manager, there's gore and splatter galore and throughout the entire film there are only a few redeeming characters of pure heart, though they shine all the brighter because of it. This movie takes upon as its quest to dance across the line of good taste as many times as possible. It's black humour made flesh.And heavens help me, I kinda like it. I kinda like it a lot. It's so over the top, so corrupt, disgusting and grotesque that it transcends all of that and becomes something entirely different. Something pure in its evilness.Is it for everyone? Absolutely not! It's for those that can laugh at dead baby jokes. For those that can see the humour in the blackest of situations. And for them it's a gem. For the rest of humanity it's best left avoided.

After his bad taste début, er, Bad Taste (1987), the young Peter Jackson made the decision to take his filth-laden sense of humour to a new level and direct Meet the Feebles, the kind of film you would expect Jim Henson to make if his life had gone in an entirely different direction and had formed a psychedelic drug habit. He still had little budget to work with, as well as the (understandable) concerns from his funders, but this was the first time he would work with his future wife Fran Walsh, who would work with him on every film after this. Maybe it is her influence that makes Feebles a noticeable step up from his début, or maybe it's not, but the film works thanks to a director seemingly more comfortable in his role, but still renegade enough to inject his guerilla sensibilities into it.The basic 'plot' revolves around The Feebles variety show, of which the main attraction is singer Heidi the Hippo (voiced by Mark Hadlow, Dori in The Hobbit (2012)), a former big star who has formed an uncontrollable attraction to cakes. Amongst the various characters is newcomer Robert, a softly-spoken and naive hedgehog who goes to great lengths to attract a seductive poodle he has fallen for. It is mainly through his eyes that we witness the mayhem of the show, which is ran by Bletch the Walrus (Peter Vere-Jones). Bletch is involved with Heidi, but is secretly having sex with a slutty feline, and is always making money on the side through Trevor the Rat's (Brian Sergent) pornography films. The show comes under threat when sex-addicted Harry the Rabbit contracts an STD and is given a few hours to live, but is busted by the Fly, a pesky journalist.What Meet the Feebles lacks in taste and any sense of actual purpose, it makes up for in sheer invention and entertainment. It moves along furiously, never stopping to consider something as unnecessary as plot, drifting from one scene of complete debauchery to the next. If you would be offended by the sight of animal ejaculating through his elongated snout onto the the pierced udders of a dominatrix cow, then I would recommending passing on this one. The humour is almost akin to that of South Park, but doesn't bogged down with satire or observational gags, and instead seems to seek to disgust. It is juvenile, certainly, but it's undeniably funny, and is simply too twisted and disturbing to go about unnoticed. It is the anti-Muppets, representing depravity where Henson's creations were driven by naive optimism (although the puppets here are quite wonderfully designed).After the proceeding Braindead (1992), which employed a lawnmower as the answer to a house overrun by horny zombies, Jackson seemed to grow up and film the astonishingly dream-like Beautiful Creatures (1994). It is simply mind-boggling how the director of this, a film that has a contortionist get his head stuck up his own a**e, would go on to be the biggest director in Hollywood and create one of the finest achievements of modern mainstream film-making, The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003). Although he never won any Oscars for them, there is plenty to enjoy in early Jackson. You could even say that some of the hideous creations in Feebles were a pretext to some of the monsters seen in Rings and The Hobbit. Although I don't remember seeing Gollum eating s**t out of a toilet with a spoon.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Got to be one of the most infantile, ridiculous films ever made. Good puppets and some amusing voice acting aside, I see no reason to recommend this film to anybody, for any reason; any intention Jackson had in mind is completely lost. It may be easy for some to assume that disliking this film is just an indication you only know him as the LOTR director, but in fact I am a fan of some of Jackson's work, both the big budget stuff and the small, and I appreciate that he pushed the boundaries of taste; I have no issue with the tone, I just wonder what made a talented film maker spend so much time on something so putrid, aimless and dull.

There've been some show-stopping songs in the long (and sometimes sullied) history of the Movies: Who can forget Judy Garland singing "Over the Rainbow" in THE WIZARD OF OZ, or Gene Kelly singing "Singing in the Rain" in SINGING IN THE RAIN, or "Memories" from CATS or Rufus Wainwright's stirring rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Halleluja" in SHREK, to mention but a few? Add to that list "Sodomy" from MEET THE FEEBLES. Who can forget the line: "People think it odda me, that I enjoy sodomy..."? And who can forget the worm who looks like he crawled straight out of THE 7 FACES OF DR. LAO, or the heroin-addicted lizard who sounds exactly like Christopher Loyd (as "Reverend Jim") on the teleseries TAXI? If you're in the mood for some murderous muppet mayhem, check out MEET THE FEEBLES.