Meet the Feebles

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
1990

Meet the Feebles
Peter Jackson
New Zealand, 1989 96 minutes
Colour/35mm
Production Company: Wingnut Films
Producers: Jim Booth, Peter Jackson
Screenplay: Danny Mulheron, Frances Walsh, Stephen Sinclair, Peter Jackson
Cinematography: Murray Milne
Editor: Jamie Selkirk
Art Director: Mike Kane
Puppet Designer: Cameron Chittock
Music: Peter Dasent
Principal Cast: Harry the Hare, Heidi the Hippo, Robert the Hedgehog, Sid the Elephant, Wynyard the Frog, Bletch the Walrus, Trevor the Rat, The Fly

Meet the Feebles. They are the most popular variety act around. The network is about to do a big TV special on them and the result can only be a monster syndicated show. But the excitement brings the filthy underbelly of Feebleland to the surface. Bletch, the giant walrus who runs the company, deals drugs for a living and two-times on his biggest star, Heidi the Hippo. Sid the Elephant, the manic depressive trainer of small furry things, is being slapped with a paternity suit by Sandy the Chicken. Wynyard, the knife-throwing frog, is addicted to every drug ever invented. His hand has not been steady for years, much to the chagrin of his assistants. And let us not mention (oh, let's!) Trevor the rat, producing home-brewed S&M porn in his basement with Daisy the Cow and Wally the Cockroach. Sounds like a normal showbiz coterie, but things get desperately out of control when Bletch gets bilked on a drug deal by Mr. Big on the day of the show. The gangland killings that follow unnerve Bletch so much that he explodes at poor Heidi during the show! When the man she loves calls her fat and unattractive, Heidi gets revenge the only way she knows how: gruesome mass murder. Acted entirely by puppets and constructed as a musical, Meet the Feebles is in turn hysterically funny and brutally violent. Director Peter Jackson has somehow found a magic mixture of Muppets on acid and Sam Peckinpah on the set of Sonny and Cher, all put through the meat grinder of Broadway Melody. Bravo! —Noah Cowan