Peter Jackson
1987
91 minutes
This is an early effort from the director of such low-budget favorites as Meet the Feebles and The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson. This is one of those movies that every weirdo who grabs a camera and a bunch of their goofy friends aspires to make, hashing together a rough zombie alien invasion script and armed with copious amounts of stage blood and butcher scraps.
You're always astonished when you run across one of these movies in the wild when these untrained directors manage to successfully even tell a simple and stupid story with a camera, which is not a trivial skill. And to do so with any kind of style is even more amazing.
You remember this (VHS) video sitting on the shelf in the horror section of the video store when you were a pre-teenager. You were always curious about it, but you fretted that even your otherwise nonchalant parents might balk at renting this for you based on the cover, which featured one of the zombie cannibal aliens holding an assault rifle and flipping off the camera. Instead you'd end up walking out with something seemingly more innocuous, like The Last House on the Left or I Spit On Your Grave.
Upon finally seeing this as an adult, you are amazed at how utterly gross and delightfully childish it is. The spectacle of one of the characters (played by the director) getting a head injury and having to occasionally replace bits of his brain with random pieces of dead monster meat is both nauseating and hilarious, as is the vomit-eating scene. You're glad you decided not to watch this while eating.
Time to choose something different: