Meet The Feebles

Director: Peter Jackson. Producers: Jim Booth, Peter Jackson. Screenplay: Frances Walsh, Stephen Sinclair, Danny Mulheron, Peter Jackson. Director of photography:  Murray Milne. Camera operator: Peter Jackson.  Editor:  Jamie Selkirk.  Production designer: Mike Kane. Costume designer: Glennis Foster. Special effects/arnourer: Stephen Ingram. Model maker: Richard Taylor.  Puppet designer:  Cameron Chittock. Puppet engineer:  Steven Greenwood. Supervising puppeteers:  Jonathon Acorn, Ramon  Aguilar. Puppeteers: Elanor Aitken, Sarah Glensor, Carl Buckley, Danny Mulheron, George Port, Ian Williamson, Justine Wright, Terri Anderton, Sean Ashton-Peach. Puppet co-ordinator: Tania Rodger. Music: Peter Dasent. Composers: Peter Dasent, Fane Flaws, Danny Mulheron. Lyrics: Arthur Baysting, Fane Flaws, Garth Frost, Danny Mulheron, Frances Walsh, Peter Dasent. Vocals: Fane Flaws, Mark Hadlow, Stuart  Devenie. Sound: Jamie Selkirk, Eric de Beus, Grant Taylor, Chris Todd, Neil Maddever.

Spoken performances:

Donna Akersten, Stuart Devenie, Mark Hadlow, Ross Jolly, Brian Sergent, Peter Vere-Jones, Mark Wright. Heidi performed by Danny Mulheron.

Cheerful puppet troupe The Feebles rehearses a live television variety hour. Offstage prima donna hippo Heidi, a torchsong singer, is told, 'I've heard better singing from a mongoose with throat cancer.' While the director, Sebastian the fox, agonizes over rehearsal disasters like the Indian contortionist getting his nose stuck up his rectum, dramas abound in the grotty backstage.

Dubbed a 'spluppet creature feature'  Meet the Feebles, initially planned as a 24 minute television short, evolved from musings about what Miss Piggy would do with Kermit were she to have  her wicked way with him. A Japanese   pre-sale enabled Peter Jackson to develop the idea into a full-length feature.

The disclaimer that no puppet were killed or maimed during the production is a lie according to Jackson, who was quoted on the Australian release saying, 'the way that we abused and treated them, I doubt whether they would want to work with us again.'1 In archaic spirit Jackson and crew make every effort to offend, using a puppet front to grossly represent and heartily celebrate every kind of bodily emission and secretion, wallowing in sick jokes, splatter and sexual perversion.

Muppet cuteness, politics, tabloid journalism, the entertainment industry and  human nature itself are satirised and allusions to other films (The Godfather, The Deer Hunter) add to the fun. Bizarre images like the black stretch limo add   a surreal edge. Metahpors come alive in images like the drug switch which literally 'pokes the borax' at drug dealers. The most

Shot in a disused Wellington railway shed, the film, with almost every shot requiring a special effect, has excellent production values. The 'cast' included  over 90 puppets (mostly  rubber) so well conceived and manipulated (the puppeteers worked under a false floor) that, aided by ingenious camera work, much of it hand held, they take on a life of their  own. At times coherence suffers in the busy plot. The excellent musical  score, with many Feeble numbers, enlivens the colourful, hectic narrative.

Meet the Feebles won worldwide recognition  as the first creature film made for an adult audience. On it's release Peter Jackson warned, 'It's a nasty little piece of work, this one, and people should know that.'2   The major investor, the New Zealand Film Commission, did not take a credit on the completed film. HM

1990 Film Fantastique Festival, Paris: Grand Prize. New Zealand Film Awards: Best Contribution to Design.

1991 Madrid Film Festival: Audience Prize for Most Popular Film.

Fanta Festival, Rome: Best Director. Best Special Effects. Best Female Performance, Heidi.

References:

1. On The Street, Sydney, 27 March 1989.

2. Sydney Morning Herald, 8 March 1989.