All ten episodes of “The Muppets Mayhem“ dropped on Disney+ earlier this week, sending beloved Muppet band, The Electric Mayhem, on a musical journey to record their first album. In true Muppet style, the journey comes with a slew of notable cameos, including a shocking horror crossover we never would’ve anticipated in a million years.
A surprising uncredited cameo by director Peter Jackson confirms that the characters from his raunchy spluppet feature (splatter + puppet), Meet the Feebles, exist within the same world as the Muppets, making for one of horror’s most surprising crossovers.
“Track 7: Eight Days a Week” is the seventh episode of the season, which sees the Muppets’ music exec Nora (Lilly Singh) attempt to create a documentary about the band. Enter director Peter Jackson, playing himself. The Award-winning director is there with a crew, and the band recognizes him instantly.
In a bizarre exchange, Muppet Floyd Pepper (Matt Vogel) reveals that not only does the band have a history with Jackson, but his Feebles as well. Jackson gives Floyd Pepper a grim update on the Feebles: “Two of them are in witness protection. The rest are in prison.”
That’s no surprise to those who have seen the spluppet feature. Poor Floyd seems a bit traumatized by the encounter, for good reason.
Meet the Feebles was the second film in Jackson’s splatter phase between Bad Taste and Braindead (Dead Alive). Originally intended to be a TV series, surprising enthusiasm from Japanese investors instead turned this into a feature-length film that followed the cast and crew behind the scenes of a Muppet-like variety show. There’s no concise central narrative to this film; Meet the Feebles is just an exploration of the sleazy underbelly of showbiz.
Though the audience spends the most time with aging star Heidi the Hippo and innocent newcomer Robert the Hedgehog, we also spend time with just about every character and facet of the show and every possible bodily fluid in the process. It begins tame enough as it introduces all the characters, mostly just sex and cursing. Still, it gradually builds into the most shocking puppet film that will likely ever be committed to celluloid.
There’s attempted rape, drug use, paternity battles, a Vietnam War flashback in the vein of Deer Hunter, puppet porn, puppet sex, murder, nudity, and almost every crude and rude vice or joke on display here. It’s also extremely gross.
“The Muppets Mayhem” was developed by Adam F. Goldberg, Bill Barretta, and Jeff Yorkes. Goldberg previously created the long-running sitcom “The Goldbergs,” which saw the return of Elvira and Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger.
It’s clear that Goldberg is a horror fan, and we salute the boldness of creating this unique Muppet crossover.
All episodes of “The Muppet Mayhem” are available now, but you can check out the Meet the Feebles crossover exchange below.
