In this day and age where young whippersnappers (who aren't as long in the tooth as people like me) remember Peter Jackson for creating the sprawling fantasy world of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and the new fantasy/horror/crime/drama world of the new "The Lovely Bones," I feel the need to serve as a reminder that back when I was a kid, we stayed up late at night to watch crusty VHS copies of grainy, low-budget horror productions that were weird and creepy, and Peter Jackson used to stand as master of the "weird and creepy" because he had this love of storytelling that was so strong it dripped from every frame and shone brightly even when he was directing a movie about demented puppets who do some very adult things.

That's right, folks, the man who won the Best Director Academy Award for telling a sweepingly epic fantasy story once filmed a movie about puppets who have sex and do drugs and go on psychotic killing sprees. Not only that, but we the degenerate who lived for these kinds of movies back in the day actually LIKED this movie and remember it fondly to this day. "Meet the Feebles" is about a group of very badly behaved puppets who perform in a theatre troupe and do quite a few naughty things behind the scenes. There's Heidi the hippo who is a fading talent who still thinks of herself as the star of the show (actually, she's probably the nicest of them all, and she gets treated like crap by all the other characters throughout the movie). There's the rabbit who has a
drug problem and a sex addiction who has acquired a strange, disgusting illness (most likely the puppet version of AIDS, back when it was uncouth to mention that disease in public...but since when did Peter Jackson care about being thought of as uncouth?)

Lucille is a poodle who is courted by the newcomer Robert (the hedgehog) throughout the film. At one point, she is drugged by Trevor the rat who then tries to rape her, and after Robert learns of this, he dismisses Lucille as a slut. Whew. My head is already spinning, and at this point, the movie wasn't even halfway over yet! What did I say about bad behavior? And keep in mind, this only scratches the surface of this madcap, deranged little cinematic exercise...there's still plenty more to come. You could fill a few seasons worth of soap operas with the madness that is crammed into this one little movie.

There's something to be said for independent filmmaking. The lack of a budget can hamper production values, but it also means that fewer people are depending on the finished film, and this gives the filmmakers more creative freedom to go crazy, which Jackson obviously did. He put things onscreen that would make Andrew Dice Clay blush with shame, and he had a blast while doing it. People who know of Jackson's work now are loathe to mention movies like "Meet the Feebles" because it is so insane and offensive and weird, but those of us in the know have seen it and what we saw was a director who put all his effort into telling a story, even when it WAS a crazy, degenerate story like this. We knew that Peter Jackson was great before anyone else knew it because we weren't afraid to watch something rough and offensive and strange. To put it another way, Peter Jackson had balls, and his movies are good because he isn't afraid to take risks...or at least he didn't used to be afraid. I like his movies these days, but I miss the Peter Jackson who didn't give a damn what people would think; the Peter Jackson who wasn't afraid to put his all into making a movie about porn and sex and drug loving puppets. I hope that Peter Jackson is still alive and kicking and that he hasn't been sanitized by success so that he's forgotten who he really is...a hell of a storyteller who wasn't afraid to tell a story that was full of hell.

I wish more people today could see this movie (you have to know it has an audience out there) and see how demented Peter Jackson once was. "Meet the Feebles" is just crazy enough to deserve to be seen, even after all these years (it really was ahead of its time...it would fit right in with some of the things we see on "South Park" and "Family Guy"). It's sick, it's funny, it's strange, and if that appeals to you, it's definitely worth your time.