Lunch Meat (1987) - Reviewed By Scabboy
Reviewed By: Scabboy
Written & Directed by: Kirk Alex
Distributed by: Not sure, doesn’t say on box, maybe Camp?
3 out of 5 skulls
I remember seeing the box for this in the local mom & pop video rental store as a kid. My father would never let me rent it- he said it looked too bloody- and by looking at the cover, I believed him. 15 years later I saw it on eBay and snagged it for 30-something bucks. I couldn’t wait to watch it.
So, I popped it in and quickly realized this was a Camp Motion Pictures style shot on V.H.S. movie. I have no problem with that, and in a weird little way I love it. The movie starts off by establishing the crazy cannibal family, no masked killer hiding in the shadows in this movie. The family basically consists of a half-wit manchild redneck, two crazy brothers (that seemed to be emulating The Hitch Hiker in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a couple older wise-cracking father type people who again seem to emulate Drayton Sawyer. 
After they are established one of the brothers decides he needs to take a piss, so instead of pissing in the woods they were he takes a ride with brother to the local BBQ restaurant to sell them some of their prime meat. This is where we meet the protagonists- in this case a Jeep Cherokee full of polo wearing preppies and one 80’s goth chick. The group of teens run out of gas and make a stop at the BBQ restaurant where the rednecks have stopped to piss. So, naturally the villains spot the teens and follow them to the woods where they were heading anyways for a weekend camping trip.
Once they get into the woods- this is 30 minutes into the film- they spot someone laying in the road presumably dead. They get out to help him and he gets up and stabs one of the guys as the rest of the family ambush them every side. That scene was actually pretty damn good, and very reminiscent of the raft massacre scene in The Burning, but not as well done. This ambush last about 5 minutes and pretty much cuts the cast down by half, now focusing on a few people. The flow of the movie drastically slows down for about 15 minutes at this point as the remaining two teens are being hunted.
The climax of the movie was pretty well done, and again a sort of change of pace. The half-wit son sort of turns out to be an unlikely hero as the heroine gets away in a scene that sort of looked like Sally’s escape in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Uber cool.
For a very low budget movie the blood and gore was really well done and not overdone. There were decapitations, stabbings, shovels to the head and a hanging if I remember correctly. The movie started out slow (as it dragged on) and once the movie got going it again slowed down. But all in all it was pretty good. In my opinion it would have worked better as a 50 minute movie rather than the 88 minutes that it was.
I thought that Kirk Alex did a great job directing this, as he was also the writer. The cinematographer wasn’t credited, and again I felt he (or she) captured some shots really well. In the end it’s a fun movie and highly recommended to people who love the Camp Motion Pictures style of movie making- movies like Cannibal Campout, Boardinghouse and Dreamaniac. If you are looking for a slickly produced 35MM 16:9 transfer, you’ll hate this.
Not available on DVD, and relatively hard to find. It’s not even listed on I.M.D.B..