‘Meet the Feebles’: Exploring Peter Jackson’s perverse puppet show
Having instantly gained attention and notoriety in equal measure after debuting with sci-fi horror comedy Bad Taste, Peter Jackson decided that the best possible creative outlet for his sophomore feature as a director was Meet the Feebles, which is essentially The Muppets if they were prone to debauchery.
Co-written, directed, and produced by the New Zealander, Jackson succinctly described the puppet-fuelled descent into madness as “a kind of Roger Rabbit meets Brazil“. Presumably, he didn’t name Kermit and the gang for fear of copyright infringement and potential legal action because it’s not difficult to find out where the main point of inspiration comes from.
The stars of The Feeble Variety Hour are in the midst of rehearsing and refining their act in the hopes of landing a major syndicated TV deal that would bring their distinct style of performative theatre to the masses, which is in no way indebted to Jim Henson’s The Muppet Show in any way, shape, or form. For Jackson, he wanted to turn his affinity for felt into something he’d want to see as a viewer.
“I decided from the outset to make exactly the sort of puppet film that I would enjoy,” he reasoned. “It was a challenge to make myself laugh, and since I still chuckle whenever I see Meet the Feebles, I guess I succeeded.” Making a film for an audience of one has the potential to backfire spectacularly, and it would be fair to say not everyone was on the same wavelength.
Initially conceived as a proof-of-concept episode of a potential late-night TV series, Meet the Feebles was rewritten into a full-length movie when potential investors suggested it would work better as such. The New Zealand Film Commission wasn’t suitably won over and rejected a request for funding, although the organisation did eventually relent and provide a significant volume of the $750,000 budget, even if the commission decided to have its name removed from the end product before it was released.
Built on the desire to see how far the envelope can be pushed, Meet the Feebles relishes the opportunity to subvert everything audiences would typically expect from a puppet-fronted flick. There are extramarital affairs, directors who specialise in pornography, paternity cases, terminal illness, drug addiction, attempted sexual assault, a parody of the Russian roulette scene from The Deer Hunter, projectile vomit, accidental suicide, death by gunfire, and a song entirely about sodomy.
In short, this ain’t The Muppets. As lowbrow as the premise may be and increasingly insane as the near-the-knuckle storyline developments keep getting, it’s clear from watching Meet the Feebles – as it was with Bad Taste and would be again with Braindead – that Jackson was a hugely ambitious and talented filmmaker who possessed the ingenuity and technical mastery to potentially reach the very top of the industry were he to be handed a budget in line with his vision.
This is the only film ever made where a busty hippo on the verge of a mental breakdown finds the red mist descending when a rival – who happens to be a Siamese cat – is discovered performing fellatio on her walrus paramour, which leads to a machine gun-assisted rampage of blood, guts, carnage, and chaos.
If that sounds gratuitous to the point of offensive, that’s basically Meet the Feebles in a nutshell, and it also handily sums up the ‘love it or hate it’ nature of the movie at large because there’s really no in-between. For what it’s worth, though, it’s so batshit it demands to be seen at least once.
