10 More Unexpected Horror Movie Survivors

When a director inserts themselves into their gloriously violent film, you can usually expect them to die. Quentin Tarantino blowing himself up in Django Unchained is a great example, and fans of the early work of Peter Jackson might have expected the same fate for Derek. But it wasn't meant to be.

Jackson appears as Derek in his first-ever feature-length film, Bad Taste. The movie is a gross and over-the-top splatter flick that depicts an alien invasion in a small New Zealand town. Derek is incredibly meek and awkward in his introduction, but he's completely changed after a scrap with an alien causes him to fall off a cliff and crack his skull open.

This accident forces Derek's brain to start dripping out of a hole in his head, which he "fixes" by wearing a hat. The fall itself already should have done him in, but the character goes wild from there on out, losing his sanity and becoming a blood-crazed alien-hunting psycho.

The combination of the director playing the character, his initially pathetic presentation, and the horrible injuries he sustains, should have kept Derek down for the count. Yet, while he was completely insane by the end, he was still breathing.