Braindead/Dead Alive, 1992

Long before he went legit with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, New Zealand's Peter Jackson made his disreputation with grotty, no-budget horror comedies: Bad Taste (1987), about aliens seeking human flesh for their outer-space fast food chain; Meet the Feelies, a sort of semi-porno Muppet Show; and this plague movie. The infester is the Sumatran rat monkey, which, one local says, was crossbred when "these great big rats come scurryin' off the slave ships and raped all the little tree monkeys." The result is rambunctious fun about mother love, child abuse and organs that ain't where they oughta be. If only "that" Peter Jackson, and not the distinguished Tolkienian, had done the King Kong remake.