Strange Country — Episode 2: Peter Jackson's Bloody Education

In 1983, a nineteen-year-old in Pukerua Bay pointed a camera at his friends and started shooting. He had no money, no film school, and no crew. Four years later, Bad Taste existed.Episode 2 of Strange Country goes to New Zealand — to the backyard where Peter Jackson invented himself as a filmmaker, and to the question that's been nagging at the edges of this show since Episode 1. Everyone assumes Jackson invented New Zealand horror. They're wrong. And that's exactly where things get interesting.We cover Bad Taste (1987), Braindead (1992), the strange political accident that accidentally funded New Zealand's film industry, and the forty-year structural silence that kept Māori filmmakers away from cameras — and what that absence means for everything that came after.Strange Country is a podcast about Australian and New Zealand horror cinema — where it came from, what it's afraid of, and what it says about two countries that don't always say it straight.Films covered: Bad Taste (1987), Braindead (1992), Sleeping Dogs (1977), Ngāti (1987)All films in this episode are in the Vault at www.strangecountry.com.au