this movie's a classic!
The population of a small town disappears and is replaced by aliens that chase human flesh for their intergalactic fast-food chain.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092610/ Director Peter Jackson shot the film on weekends over a four-year period with friends playing the lead roles. Jackson funded most of the film himself until towards the end of the shoot when the New Zealand Film Commission gave him money to finish his project after being impressed with what he'd already produced. There was never a script for the movie; each scene was filmed from ideas the director had come up with during the week.
Craig Smith was part of the original cast and was married and then divorced within the four-year time frame it took to make the film. Because most of the filming took place on weekends, he found himself written out because his new wife - a devout Christian - objected to him working on Sundays. Smith was written back into the film when he got divorced.
Pete O'Herne hadn't shaved before his first scene. Director Peter Jackson told him to keep that look for continuity. So for four years, O'Herne couldn't shave for more than once a week and this habit was hard to break after shooting was completed.
Peter Jackson constructed his own counterweighted steady-cam device for this film that cost only $15.
While the original VHS box artwork had the alien flipping the middle finger, tapes distributed to US video rental stores were provided with an extra finger that could be glued in place to make it look like it was making a "peace" sign instead.
The film started life as a ten-minute short called "Roast of the Day", which started shooting in 1981. The story concerned Giles (Craig Smith), an aid worker who comes to the small coastal town of Kaihoro on collection day. The young man encounters a psychopath named Robert who then pursues him. Giles escapes the madman and reaches an old heritage estate where he tries to contact the authorities. However, the same clan of cannibalistic psychos that Robert is from occupies the house and captures Giles. In an ironic twist the aid worker is later cooked up to relieve the famine of the cannibals. Along the way Peter Jackson added the "special forces" team that would be sent to rescue Giles, but in this early version the "boys" would turn out to be cannibals as well (they staged the whole thing because they like to play with their food). When it came time for Jackson to finally edit the film together he found that he had nearly 50 minutes' worth of usable footage. So with its length and being inspired by the 16mm efforts of Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981), Jackson continued shooting to make the movie a full-length feature.
Doug Wren who played the Alien leader, Lord Crumb, died during post-production. Because of the non-audio filming, his voice was dubbed by a different actor.
