Welcome to Harvey’s Hellhole, a monthly column devoted to spotlighting the movies that were poorly marketed, mishandled, reshaped, neglected or just straight-up destroyed by Harvey Weinstein during his reign as one of the most powerful studio chiefs in Hollywood. This month, we’ll be celebrating the 30th anniversary of a small but ambitious film from New Zealand that catapulted a horror filmmaker to A-list-director status and launched the acclaimed careers of its two young stars.
Heavenly Creatures was a departure for Peter Jackson. The New Zealand filmmaker was getting a cult rep for churning out horror comedies like Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles and the zombie splatterfest Braindead (or Dead Alive, as it’s known around these parts). But Creatures is a fact-based horror story set right in his homeland. Jackson takes us to the early ‘50s, dramatizing the events that led to New Zealand teenagers Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker (nee Rieper) killing Parker’s mother. After a five-year prison stint, Hulme and Parker went their separate ways, with Parker becoming a recluse and Hulme going on to write mystery novels under the pseudonym Anne Perry. (Perry, who passed away last year at age 84, was identified by the media after Creatures’ release.) “It’s known as this very sensational, sort of evil schoolgirl killing, with newspaper headlines at the time that shouted out things like ‘Are They Mad or Bad?’” Jackson said in an interview. “We wanted to find the emotional heart of the story.”
Using Parker’s diaries as a blueprint, Jackson and co-writer/producer/significant other Fran Walsh make the case that Hulme and Parker (respectively played by then-up-and-comers Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey) were two teen besties whose intense love for each other made both their parents concerned. Hulme’s absent-minded father (Clive Morrison) and Parker’s working-class mum (Sarah Peirse) particularly believe they’re both one bath away from making the love that dares not speak its name.
Winslet is all sass and snottiness (she often looks and sounds like Rik Mayall’s obnoxious poet Rick from the BBC sitcom The Young Ones) as Hulme, whose enthusiasm for storytelling and matinee-idol tenor Mario Lanza wins over Lynskey’s always-scowling Parker. Together, they form their own imaginary universe, where they call each other by different names, cavort with the clay figurines of fantasy characters they create, and spend some time in an alternative afterlife known as “The Fourth World.”
Unfortunately, reality keeps interfering with their utopia. Hulme’s parents break up and decide to send their daughter to live in South Africa with her aunt. Of course, Parker wants to go with her, but Parker’s mom won’t allow it. That’s when they devise a plan to “kill Mother.” “We have worked it out carefully and are both thrilled by the idea,” Parker cheerfully writes in her diary. (Parker’s entries also serve as voice-over narration.)
The bloody, climactic murder aside, Creatures is an imaginative, heart-rending coming-of-age tale of young queer love. Although he’s tackling a serious, fact-based subject matter, Jackson — still a genre filmmaker at heart — handles it in a visually stylish, darkly comic manner. (I’m sure, for many viewers, the comparisons between him and fellow fantastical filmmaker Terry Gilliam started with this film.) As Hulme and Parker begin their whimsical (and often very loud) friendship, the camera often whips and zooms all around them, capturing their dizzying, youthful joy.
Creatures marked the debut of Weta Digital, the visual effects/animation company co-founded by Jackson. Weta went all out with the fantasy sequences, creating the life-sized latex costumes of the girls’ clay figures and digitally manipulating such scenes as the morphing appearance of “The Fourth World.”

Creatures was one of many smart acquisitions Miramax snapped up that year, winning awards at the Venice and Toronto film fests. Even though the $5 million movie only made $5.4 million worldwide, it was a hit with critics, appearing on many year-end, ten-best lists. Creatures also won at the 1995 New Zealand Film and Television Awards, where it was nominated for ten awards and won nine. Eventually, Jackson and Walsh scored their first Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. (It lost to fellow Miramax release Pulp Fiction.)
And let’s not forget that, thanks to Harvey and them, Jackson would go on to direct the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was Weinstein who finessed the rights from producer/longtime holder Saul Zaentz (who would later produce the Miramax-distributed Oscar winner The English Patient) and put up $10 million for the project’s development.
You would think the movie that made Hollywood take notice of Jackson, Winslet, and Lynskey would be easily accessible online. Unfortunately, like so many imports Miramax distributed back in the day, Creatures is currently not on any U.S. streamers or VOD services. I’ve heard rumblings that Jackson is planning to digitally restore and re-release all his pre-Rings films. (Creatures did have a 30th anniversary screening at this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival.)
Even with its lack of availability, Creatures is still a picture young audiences, whether they spent their formative years in the closet or just angry and confused, continue to discover. In a 2020 essay on the queer media site Autostraddle, writer Drew Burnett Gregory discusses how Creatures (“the first lesbian movie I ever saw,” she wrote) left her more empathetic to the girls’ plight than shocked and disgusted. “I know what it’s like to feel trapped,” Gregory wrote. “When I was Paul’s age I had violent fantasies about my friends who were bullying me and I felt a rage towards my mother that scares me now to recall… We are the people we are and we are the people we become, and while I was not like Paul and Juliet I understand their circumstances enough to feel for their unfortunate metamorphosis.“
After making several tongue-in-cheek scary movies, Peter Jackson hit the big time with Heavenly Creatures, a film about adolescence, alienation and young love — and if that isn’t the most terrifying shit a person can ever experience, I don’t know what it is.
Heavenly Creatures is not available to rent, buy or stream in the U.S, but someone thankfully uploaded the 108-minute extended cut to YouTube. (Catch it before it’s taken down.)