Bad Meat Review on DVD from Jinga Films!

In the middle of nowhere, surrounded by miles upon miles of woods and small back roads, there is a boot camp for troubled teens. As you approach the camp, signs are nailed up and you could be forgiven for thinking you are Roddy Piper wearing a pair of THEY LIVE shades. “Obey,” “Conform” and so on.

Once you arrive your belongings are thrown around by the guards that include a dominatrix, a huge black man and a revolting bloke with big ass sideburns. Like cartoon characters they are so over-the-top, and there’s the camp ‘commander’ who has modelled himself on Adolph Hitler. Played by Lucifer himself (well, in the Supernatural TV series anyhow) Mark Pellegrino, he is twitchy and on the edge. He has no time for the kids he is paid to deal with, instead he swears to discipline each and every one of them.

On this boot camp it is mandatory that every girl has to share a room together whilst wearing only bra’s and panties, and the lads stay fully clothed in their room most of the time. So far we’ve discovered stereotypical camp staff, so let’s start on the teenagers.

Like any good Friday the 13^th or old school slasher, we have the innocent girl, Rose. Blonde, nervous, but shows her panties and is an arsonist. There’s Mark, he’s black so he’s a street thug with an afro. He likes nothing better than to burn bridges by threatening the other lads on the camp. Then we have Tyler, played by Dave Franco (Warm Bodies, Fright Night, Now You See Me) who is in all fairness a good actor, as far as portraying a troubled teen who has a huge reputation with everyone. Unfortunately, since Tyler is claustrophobic, a majority of his screen time is spent locked outside in a bunker screaming whilst Rose tries to calm him midway by telling him the color of her panties and how tight they are. (Funnily enough you discover later in the film that a certain camp worker has a huge collection of used panties in bags, labelled with names. There’s a real theme running through this flick and the writer’s head.) The rest of the teens consist of a tough girl who hates another girl because the other girl is a lesbian: “Bitch get those dyke eyes off me!” and an emo kid who’s quiet with piercings.

Camp Commander Doug has a thing for Rose. He interviews her in his office, filming the proceedings. At first he’s very understanding of her fire starting ways, he understands, he really does, her lack of attention at home. As Rose says, “I’ve been a vegetarian for three years and they still serve me meat,” he makes her laugh and smile, then suddenly flips out, making Rose cry. The camera on his desk laps it all up.

Meanwhile the other guards are more or less introduced. The dominatrix, Peters, wanks off the big black dude whilst he listens at the girl’s door, the animal like sideburns bloke watches at their window wanking and later bullies the camp’s cook. With names like Wolf and Skullet, they are rather just cardboard cut-outs.

Speaking of the cook, he’s the central plot development because he sticks a load of diseased infected meat in the stew; not before feeding some to the guard dogs, who soon die gorily. See, the teens are only given an uncooked potato to eat so the staff tuck into their stew heartily. That night the dominatrix, buggers her bloke with a lubed strap-on whilst they’re both gimped up to the max. Meanwhile, Doug reads a book surrounded by his Nazi collection. The meat takes effect quite graphically as they vomit everywhere, fill their pants and basically writhe and wriggle about violently in the mess.

The next morning, the cook takes the one vehicle, drives off and the teens oversleep. Wondering where the guards are, they wander the grounds, break into the confiscation room and find amongst other things a crossbow. Rose is concerned for Tyler who’s of course screaming in the bunker, so she heads to the bungalows where the guards stay. She finds them all unconscious in their own waste and still twitching. As she hunts for the keys to the bunker, they start to wake and have changed into snarling spitting flesh eating infected zombies? Mutants perhaps? Just frigging idiots to be fair, you can’t take their acting seriously enough. Penis’ are torn off, blood splashes and the emo lad performs a The Thing style autopsy on a dog, his findings wrote on the notebook next to him simply as Bad Meat.

The bridging scenes of this film has a totally bandaged survivor laid in hospital who has perhaps been skinned. Apparently people have been sick in the hospital when they see the remains. A computer is wheeled in and this unknown survivor types notes in between fits of agony and staring at the ceiling. What does it all mean? Nothing because nothing is ever explained!!

Jinga Films have released Bad Meat as a meatless bone of a package. So basic it’s almost comical, because the trailer listed doesn’t even exist at all. Well, we couldn’t find it unless it’s like a random easter egg somewhere. So how can such a film deserve a release? Easily, because Bad Meat has nowhere to go and is unsure of itself.

Guess what? There is a reason for this mess of a script and the plot holes forever. Look, where did the meat come from? What happened to Tyler and why are there so many gaffs? Blood on a wound before the wound is made, an open window when it was closed before, that sort of thing. I could go on and on, but even large story angles are never explained or closed. With all that in mind we gotta research and find that, to be fair, this movie should not have been released at all in the state it’s in. Bad Meat is apparently unfinished. The budget ran out and only a few of the actors returned at certain times (so painfully obvious when some characters simply vanish), just sheer bad luck all round.

Samhain, some years ago, had to change their ending if I recall and no one bothered brushing up the open parts, Jigsaw jumps from one sort of film to another (not explaining how something burnt totally can return un-scarred) and of course Spookies (read review here) was once called Twisted Souls and rushed to be completed by a totally different director and set of actors. At least the above three could be seen as passable, but Bad Meat is frustrating, but it could have been a good crimson horror film. Most of the acting is fine, the location is eerie and used well, the gore is fantastic in parts (especially the dog autopsy), and the vomit scenes are realistic and gut churning.

That’s the danger of low budget projects I guess. There are probably hundreds of quality creations with potential sat somewhere unfinished and forgotten — Bad Meat should have been left in limbo unfortunately, because the product is shamefully worthless as it is. Why not put on a brief documentary which explains things? Or better still, use some damn glove puppets to fill in the plot holes? Why not? It would be better than leaving a film to wallow in bad review hell when it really doesn’t deserve it.

Jinga Films and in the UK, Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment deserve no props for this. The tag-line in the UK states “Cabin Fever meets Wilderness,” as quoted by no one, just slapped to the DVD box.

Who knows, in the future the original crew could have gotten a fresh cast, used the best footage as flashbacks to an awful tragedy and made a brand new Bad Meat.

This review is from the Jinga Films release. Either release blows on a strap-on.

AKA: Bad Meat – Sadistic Maneater, Carne Ma, Pokvareno Meso

Directed by: Lulu Jarmen
Written by: Paul Gerstenberger
Produced by: Phyllis Laing
Cinematography by: Frank Reynolds
Editing by: Frank Reynolds
Music by: Evan Kroeker
Special Effects by: Allan Cooke, Louise Mackintosh
Cast: Mark Pellegrino, Elisabeth Harnois, Tahj Mowry, Dave Franco, Monique Ganderton
Year: 2011
Country: Canada
Language: English
Color: Color
Runtime: 1h 32min

Distributor: Jinga Films