Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films Blog, 2013
Images from the Internet
Bad
Meat
Directed by Lulu
JarmenMVD Visual
Jingai Films
92 minutes, 2011 / 2013
http://en.wordpress.com/tag/bad-meat
www.MVDvisual.com
I truly had high hopes for the proudly self-proclaimed
heavily flesh and fluid film that is Bad
Meat. After all, it was filmed around Winnipeg. But alas and alack, it wasn’t
meant to be.
Indie horror films, even bad ones, can be a joy,
sometimes because of how bad they are. Then there is something like this one.
Before I wrote this review, I actually did something I never do, which is read
other people’s reviews. I’ll explain why in a bit.
Shades of the original The Hills Have Eyes II (1984), this project was started and not
really completed first time around, under the helm of Robert Schmidt. The
budget either was pulled or ran out, or studio interest waned, and the project
was pulled after being mostly put in the can. After the relative success of
some of this young cast, it was decided to be revived. Stories vary whether it
was Schmidt who sewed it together with some new footage, or gave up and the
studio did it. Either way, Schmidt didn’t want his name on it, and they put the
imaginary Jarmen to it.
While there are definite problems with the initial storyline,
it still had a lot going for it. The plot centers around six teens (who for
once actually look like teens), three males and three females, who are dumped
by their parents at a motivational camp for various “crimes,” such as fire
fetish, lesbianism and letting the frogs loose from the school’s biology lab. Hardway
is not so much an Outward Bound as a hard labor camp. All that’s missing is the
metal balls chained to their feet. Running away isn’t an option because it is
too far in the middle of nowhere (okay, no Winnipeg jokes here).
The camp is run by a physically and emotionally sadistic
leader (scene stealer Mark Pellegrino) who is obsessed with Nazis (e.g., he has
a chessboard where the “king” is Adolph), and he is shown reading a book about
the Final Solution (Death Camp: The Josef
Mengele Story) and laughing. His underlings include an Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS type, her lover/co-“counselor” is an
equally sadistic huge black man, with the last being a bar bell boy that could
be Larry the Cable Guy on steroids.
All of them abuse the young six, as well as the hired
cook. The latter takes some tainted dog meat and serves it at dinner, before quitting
and taking the only vehicle on the property (of course). The young charges are
forced to eat a potato while the bullies have the, well, bad meat, thereby unintentionally
saving them from it. After a night of a lot of puking on a The Family Guy Ipecac level, the four leaders become guttural, sex-obsessed
cannibals.
The story is shown in a series of flashbacks by the sole
survivor (I’m not giving anything away here since that is explained in the
first few minutes), who is wrapped from head to toe in bloody bandages that
continually weep red.
The gore effects are mostly top notch, relying totally on
appliances, models and make-up rather than digital enhancements. They are
beautifully done and appropriately gross with lots of vomit, blood and body
parts
All of the actors playing the teens are solid in their
parts, having made their way through multitudes of recurring parts in various
television series. And some even have famous siblings in real life (Dave Franco,
brother of James, and Tahj Mowry, brother of twins Tamera and Tia). But I
digress… There isn’t much chance for character development because they obviously
filmed some of the harder scenes first, probably leaving that to the end of the
shoot.
And there lies the problem with this film. Because of the
disruption to shooting and the slapdash way it was put together, there are way
too many gaps in the story. I’m not talking about a question here and there,
but rather entire scenes missing. I thought the DVD had skipped, and that’s
when I went to other reviews to see what I had missed. Apparently, everyone had
the same comments. Characters disappear and reappear as just a jaw bone being
chomped. Another, who is given the impression of being the lead, is tossed away
in a cage and we never see him get out (or die). In fact, more than half the
characters are still alive in the flashback when the final shot is shown in the
present.
Whether Schmidt gave up trying or he was booted for going
over budget (the film does have a wonderful and mainstream look), this is a
sorry case of caveat emptor, because this
sounds like it should be a great film, and it really could have been, but it’s
not all there, like your money when you purchase it.
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