Lunch Meat (1987) (USA)

aka Cannibal

⭐️⭐️

This VHS box use to scare the hell out of me when I was little and searching through the Horror section at my local video store. It just promised such horrific things, added with that title that is way grosser in context to the whole cannibalism vibe promised. Of course, like most of these low budget late-80s flicks, it was empty threats magnified in the brain of an idiot. So I finally sat down and watched the damn thing (never worked up the courage in those days) thanks to a fellow trash-film-loving (and creating) loon I trade flicks with. A family of backwoods idiots need meat to sell to a local hamburger joint and that is really unfortunate for some high school seniors on their way to a rich prick’s family cabin. Cattle is awfully expensive and requires long term care and investment but if one were to slaughter some city folk who were wandering around where they shouldn’t be… well, that’s all profit right there, Bubba. The six “kids” from L.A. catch a couple of the rednecks’ attention at the shitty burger place by pure coincidence. One of the backwoods brothers wets his pants. So, yeah. Well, the hicks track down the fresh meat and trick them into taking a detour. The biggest and most braindead of the bunch pretends to be injured in the middle of the road, luring the derps out of the car and massacring one of ‘em immediately. He also helps himself to some meat. The rest of the family strike, decapitating the cutest of the bunch, injuring one dude with a pickax and allowing three of them (rich prick included) to escape into the woods. The hunt is on and the chances of survival are pretty damn weak. It has its incompetent charms but every character ranges from forgettable to unbearable and makes for some tough watchin’. The gore is cheap, the talent is absent, the hero looks like someone took Balki from Perfect Strangers out of the oven too early and there’s a couple household chores you should probably get done while it’s polluting your television. I liked the score and there’s enough perfect awfulness to make one viewing survivable. There’s way more pitchfork to the foot than I was expecting and I think this is the most amount of heavy breathing I’ve ever seen on screen in a film that has zero humping in it.