Meet The Feebles (1989)

Have you ever wondered what muppets do when the lights are off and the stage is closed? Now's your chance! The Feebles Variety Hour, sort of a third-rate version of the Muppet Show, is getting ready for its television debut which starts in a matter of hours. But the manager Bletch has got a few problems. His wife and star of the show Heidi the Hippo is on the verge of both finding out about his affair with Samantha the cat; his secret drug and hardcore porn businesses are going awry; the musical conductor, a gay fox named Sabastian, is itching to perform his own special number, a catchy ode to the act of sodomy; the MC, a bunny named Harry, might have caught a fatal STD from a night of depravity; and one of his core performers is a drug-addicted Vietnam vet. Little does Bletch suspect though that his problems are going to get a lot worse once an already unstable Heidi is pushed over the edge...

I can't help but wonder, when Lord of the Rings does come out, how many Tolkeinites will bother looking up Peter Jackson's previous work. Sure, they might come across the beautiful, charged Heavenly Creatures or the entertaining horror-comedy The Frighteners, but they might also stumble upon his early low-budget work, Bad Taste, Dead Alive, and this little gem. I guess their reaction will be a lot like the person who hasn't heard of John Waters before seeing Hairspray, and suddenly goes right from that to Pink Flamingos.

Like Dead Alive and Bad Taste, Meet The Feebles is wonderfully tasteless and, well, gross. You have a scene where Bletch devours a talking silverfish only to vomit him up later (of course, the silverfish still talks to the very end...), a cow and a cockroach being filmed in a S&M porno, a rabbit vomiting up an ocean's worth of puke, and various other niceties as only Peter Jackson could film them. What makes all this special is that it involves an entire cast of muppets. Interestingly, though, there doesn't seem to be any direct parallels between these performing muppets and those performing muppets, except in the case of Heidi the Hippo, who resembles Miss Piggy in her prima donna personality, voice, weight problem, and possible psychotic tendencies (but in Miss Piggy's case, those tendencies are a lot more subtle.) Despite the fact that Heidi does end up slaughtering most of the film's characters with a machine gun (and you haven't lived until you've seen a muppet explode in blood and gore) and some jokes are made out of her obsessive eating, she is still quite a sympathetic character. One can't feel help but feel sorry for her as she sings one last song as the cops come to take her away.

There's a lot to like here, and the film has its fair share of hilarious moments, coming not just from the pure shock value of it all and from Jackson's great eye for visuals. A lot of credit has to go to the voice talent. Heidi comes across as a loveable, clinically depressed version of Miss Piggy, and the voice for Bletch matches his sinister, vicious character perfectly. Kudos also go to the voices responsible for the helplessly naive Robert and the bitchy, flamboyant Sabastian.

Even with all this, there's still a few noticeable problems. There's quite a few plot lines running through the film, and they rarely gel together. For example, the film introduces Robert (or should I say, Wobert) as a great contrast to the decadence and depravity of the Feebles cast, but all in all he doesn't really do anything for the overall plot or interact too strongly with the other central plotlines. The lighting is poor in some scenes, making it difficult to follow the action at times. But I know no matter what I say, you'll still hunt down a copy, simply because of the premise of seeing muppets engaging in foul acts. That's fine, since I can honestly say there's more to Meet The Feebles than just its innovations in muppet realism.

Choice Quotes:

It might just improve your sex / It's a hard act to follow/ A fact that fundamentalists find difficult to swallow...

-A couple of lyrics from 's "Sodomy" song.

"It's a lovely course. I'm tempted to join myself."

"No chance of that I'm afraid, Cedric."

"You mean you discriminate against Scots?"

"No! We just don't like assholes in the clubhouse."

-Bletch and Cedric

"Thank you everybody, you've all mutilated that number rather nicely! We'll have another shot at it at 2:30 and perhaps put it out of its misery." -Sabastian