Peter Jackson: A Film-maker’s Journey. Brian Sibley

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      Craig’s departure from Bad Taste. He allowed himself to be ‘written out’ in a gory way. At the time, I just shot some random footage, having no idea how I would end up using it and how it would shape the finished movie. It was a big problem.

      anyone wearing a toga!” Without the “good bits” we’d have a real turkey on our hands.’

      The personal circumstances that had led Craig to this decision were less sudden than it must have seemed on that Sunday morning when he delivered his ultimatum. ‘At the time,’ says Craig, ‘it seemed like the right thing to do. I had serious health problems: I was hooked on prescription drugs, was drinking heavily and was pretty much f***** in the brain. After several months of some of the worst experiences, I became involved with some devout Pentecostalists who, as they saw it, were trying to drag me over to the light. Frankly, I was at war within myself and my involvement with the film came to seem like another of those things that I needed to change…’

      To Peter, the announcement was little short of devastating:

      This turn of events was a real bombshell to me. As I sunk back in my chair all I could see was eight grand, in used twenties, floating down in front of my eyes. My next fairly coherent thought was “Thank God we didn’t get the Film Commission grant”. We would have been in a very awkward position.

      Peter and Ken attempted to ‘reason’ with Craig – ‘the discussion was full of deep and meaningful theology and the whole thing should have been broadcast on Credo’ – but it was to no avail. Eventually, they reached an understanding:

      I explained to him that we had a bunch of really nasty aliens on our hands and they had to be disposed of somehow. What did he think would happen to religion if they were allowed to take over the world? He relented a bit and said that he would kill them on screen, so long as they were only shot. Pointy things like axes, knives and bayonets were a no-no, and chainsaws were Right Out! I tried to make him see that more gory methods of killing off the alien baddies gave us far more scope for humour, thereby making a joke of the film. Shooting them was dull and in many respects more cold-blooded. However, he was quite adamant.

      In the end, it simply came down to a situation where an actor was trying to control what a writer/director does with his film. Even to a photoengraver like myself, that was pretty hard to take. However noble his motives may have been, I wasn’t going to allow him to censor what I wanted to do.

      Recalling what was a difficult time, Craig Smith (for whom religion would later prove ‘a phase’ which he ‘got over’), says of Peter’s attitude: ‘I was, at the time quite sincere about my moral stand – on one occasion, I’d even dragged Ken along to a revival meeting out of serious concerns for his immortal soul! I honestly believe that Peter tried to understand where I was coming from and, remarkably in view of what had happened, remained a friend despite having left him with a serious headache.’ As Peter put it at the time: ‘I always have respect for other people’s beliefs, no matter what they are, so I couldn’t get too angry with Craig.’

      In passing, Peter hinted that the blame for Craig’s decision might have been laid at the door of the Film Commission! ‘I think he took the rejection of our grant application a little harder than the rest of us,’ Peter told Jim. ‘The idea of another year or so of filming on a rejected movie must have been a little depressing for him and he may have opted for the easy way out. I don’t altogether blame him. At times I wish I had an easy way out as well! Still, whatever his motives, one thing was sure: he had a rotten sense of timing.’

      Peter finally agreed to write Craig out of the film and Craig agreed to shoot for a couple more days in order to make sense of the plot changes – although, at that moment the director had to confess, he ‘didn’t even know what the plot of my own film now was!’ Worst of all was the frustration of ‘blowing two weeks leave just sitting around the house thinking.’ After all, as he wryly pointed out: ‘That was something that I could have done just as well at work or on the train!’

      After taking several long walks over the hills above Pukerua Bay, ‘trying to get inspiration from somewhere’, Peter finally had it ‘all sorted out’. Giles would be killed during the escape from Gear Homestead and the S.A.S. men who had previously turned out to be aliens would no longer be either S.A.S. or aliens, but ‘a special task force set up to monitor and react to any U.F.O. activities’.

      When, years later, the recasting of the role of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings resulted in a lot of last-minute rescheduling, there were those who expressed surprise at Peter’s apparent calmness in the face of what was a major crisis. What they didn’t know was that he had been there before, but could at least console himself with the thought that, unlike Giles’ Big Day, he hadn’t already sixteen months of filmed footage in the can.

      By the time he was writing to the Film Commission, Peter had cut ten minutes of footage to make sense of Craig’s scenes that couldn’t now be completed and had worked quite a few new ‘goodies’ into the scenario:

      ‘The very first scene has one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in a film and a little later there are some appalling things done with a sledgehammer, however, I won’t go into details here. You’ll just have to wait with mouth-watering anticipation until I’ve got it edited! Despite the gore, I think people will accept it for the black comedy it is. I think both of the scenes that I mentioned above are very funny, but then I might be a trifle warped!’