For someone who is mostly known for his work on The Lord of the Rings franchise, Peter Jackson actually has quite a massive filmography. Jackson has long been a writer and director in the film industry in a large variety of genres, beginning with some of the best gross-out movies in the horror genre. He’s always been interested in the fantastical and the weird, so it makes sense that his filmography drifted from horror to the supernatural and into the fantasy genre with Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
If you have ever watched one of The Lord of the Rings films but haven’t seen the director’s other work, please give Jackson’s filmography a chance: he is talented in a multitude of ways you wouldn’t expect. Here are all of Peter Jackson’s movies outside the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies.
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Bad Taste
Endeavor Productions
Let’s start off strong with Bad Taste, basically the polar opposite of how you see Peter Jackson’s work. The film is a comedy horror movie about aliens that eat human flesh. Not in a scary way though! These aliens have made an entire town’s population disappear and have completely taken over. Then they need to collect as much human flesh as they can to supply their intergalactic fast-food chain, duh. This movie is not everyone’s cup of tea, but if that little summary made you giggle, maybe Bad Taste is your taste.
Braindead / Dead Alive
Trimark PicturesORO Films
This film goes by two names, Braindead and Dead Alive. It is referred to as either title, but it seems that the title changes depending on the distribution location. The film follows a young man whose mother gets bitten by a monkey, dies, then comes back to life to eat and kill everything in sight.
As you can tell, Jackson is a fan of this chaotic, comedic space of horror, and he masters it in a way that was perhaps only topped by director Sam Raimi or Stuart Gordon. For horror fans, in particular, this film melds monster and body horror with comedy and the weirdly sweet and sad relationship between a man and his mother. The final act is literally one of the bloodiest, goriest scenes in film history.
The Frighteners
Universal Pictures
The Frighteners follows a man (Michael J. Fox) after his wife is killed in a tragic car accident. Soon after this incident, the man discovers that he can speak to the dead and utilizes this new skill to con the living. However, life can’t be that easy, and when a demonic spirit appears to terrorize the town, he discovers he may be the only one who can stop it. This film follows that horror comedy genre that Jackson loves so much, but this one also contains some hilarious and lighthearted references to other popular horror films. Fox is delightfully loose here, and The Frighteners found Jackson working with the biggest budget he’d had at the time, courtesy of his arthouse success with the critically acclaimed Heavenly Creatures.
Heavenly Creatures
Miramax Films
Heavenly Creatures is a departure from Jackson’s horror-comedy space and instead is a psychological drama based on a very well-known New Zealand murder. The film follows two young women, Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, who after creating a very tight bond, decide to murder Pauline’s mother, who they see as the only obstacle to them finally being together. The girls believe that they are somehow able to ascend to a “Fourth World,” or a sort of heaven, which hinders their reality and perception of events. This is one of Jackson’s most revered films, one which found him combining his interest in disturbing ideas with a newfound psychological and dramatic space, and Heavenly Creatures earned him honors at the Venice International Film Festival and an Oscar nomination.
King Kong
Universal Pictures
King Kong is probably what you would assume Peter Jackson makes: a lot of big-budget action-packed blockbusters. This is definitely more on par with The Lord of the Rings franchise. This film in particular is the eighth in the King Kong franchise and is a direct remake of the original 1933 film of the same title. It was a passion project for Jackson, and from the beginning of development to its release, the film took over 10 years to create.
This iteration of King Kong was very well received by critics and has an 84% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. While Jackson was originally slated to be a part of the sequel to this King Kong, the project was abandoned when Warner Brothers acquired the rights to the franchise.
Meet the Feebles
South Gate EntertainmentIntervision
Now, you may think you finally understand Peter Jackson’s filmography and his area of expertise; wrong. Allow us to introduce you to Meet the Feebles, a puppet musical and pitch-black comedy perfect for a very specific audience. The film is the darkest version of The Muppets you have ever seen. Meet the Feebles is definitely not for children, who traditionally enjoy puppet musicals. The film also isn’t really for most adults — it’s a very low-budget, warped, misanthropic film about a bunch of hateful puppets in the entertainment and pornography industries, and involves a lot of sex, drugs, violence, assault, and basically anything awful you can think of. Meet the Feebles was way ahead of its time, and remains a disturbing (albeit funny) film to this day.
The Lovely Bones
Paramount Pictures
The Lovely Bones is a supernatural thriller drama, somewhere in the same vein as Heavenly Creatures. This film is based on a 2002 novel of the same name and has a star-studded cast (a young Saoirse Ronan is great alongside a menacing Stanley Tucci, with Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, and Rachel Weisz all delivering great performances).
The Lovely Bones follows a young girl who, after being murdered, remains in some in-between space between life and death. She is stuck here because she is unable to decide whether she should seek vengeance on her killer, or give her family the space they need to grieve. This film did not have the best critical reception, but some diehard fans remain and bring the film to new audiences, especially because of the haunting performances and polished cinematography, all leading up to a breathtaking ending.
They Shall Not Grow Old
Warner Bros. Pictures
They Shall Not Grow Old is one of Jackson’s most recent endeavors and is yet another deviation from his comfort zone. This documentary is comprised of colorized and modernized footage from World War I, originally housed in the Imperial War Museum’s archives. This is the first documentary that Jackson directed, and it seems as if he’s enjoying it; he later worked on the documentary series The Beatles: Get Back, and both projects are fascinating.
It’s clear that Jackson has always had a great interest in special effects — at the beginning of his career, they were used for disgusting gore scenes; in the middle of his career, it was used for epic fantasy sequences; now in his career, Jackson seems to be applying his passion for special effects to restoration and making very old footage look contemporary. They Shall Not Grow Old serves as an immersive and emotional experience for audiences, and a beautiful testament to history, one which quite literally brings the past to life.
