Kirk Alex, director and writer of Lunch Meat, would one day decide that he wanted to make a film and what better subject than backwoods hillbillies who kill city folk? Even more so, what if they killed people, chopped and ground them up and then sold the meat from those poor souls to a local restaurant? Throw in a bit of action, a lot of violence and a bit of cannibalism and it should be cinema gold. Suffice it to say, it was not quite that and yet in a terrible way, it was.

There is not a whole lot of plot to go with this picture, some friends look to do a little camping at a cabin up in the woods when they run afoul of a cannibal family who are looking for a bit of a meal. Not every movie needs to have the most intricate of stories to tell a good one and this might have worked quite well had the execution been a little stronger. To say this was low-budget would do it a disservice because it was almost non-existent, at least to the discerning audience. Nobody that anybody would have heard of would star, aside from an up-and-coming Ashlyn Gere, and the performances of those who did appear were not very good and that is putting it kindly. They might have been slightly more palatable had the script been a little stronger but alas, that was not to be either.

Given all of that though, the movie was incredibly cheesy and thus, kind of fun as a result. The special effects were terrible but would provide a giggle here and there and once things really got rolling, it was hard to turn away as one wanted to see if anybody would survive the massacre that was taking place. As for the killing, despite the shortfall in practical effect money, there was still some horror to be found and sometimes it would even be fairly gruesome. The look of the film and the amateurish way it was shot would actually play in its favour with some of the scenes almost seeming as if they could be real. If there was one thing that would sell this picture, it would have to be the violence and all of the killing that would take place. Everything else was so poor that had this been any other genre, it would not have even rated on anybody’s radar. The film would also feature a chase scene that was quite long, exceptionally long even and that while frustrating, at one point would actually become slightly hilarious simply because it seemed as if it would never end.

To be fair, as poor as it was, Lunch Meat had just a wee bit going for it and though most would be quick to condemn it for its poor production values and its brutality, the unintentional humour and the horror represented within make it worth seeking out if only as a curiosity.

1.5 out of 5