REVIEWED - DEAD MEAT: Made for around €100,000, which in the world of movie financing is a handful of bottle-tops, Conor McMahon's début feature certainly looks rough and ready. But, decked out with satisfying ultra-violence, dizzying camera moves and pleasingly sick jokes, this zombie thriller exudes almost as much tantalising potential as emulsified viscera, writes Donald Clarke
Making use of the conventions established by George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and the comic irreverence of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films, McMahon sets his characters adrift in rural Leitrim and manages to deliver a film that, though firmly within its chosen genre, feels quite original. Imagine Cannibal Holocaust remade by the Glenroe production team and you will get some impression of what Dead Meat looks like.
The picture follows the plucky Helena (Marian Araujo), who, with the assistance of burly gravedigger Desmond (David Muyllaert), makes her way across fields swarming with the undead towards a castle where Sinister Forces of the State (we have such things?) plan a mass rescue.
Along the way, after a gleefully tasteless incident involving an eyeball and a Hoover, they hook up with hurley-wielding lunatic Cathal (Eoin Whelan) and find themselves under attack by killer cows. It transpires - unfortunate timing here, considering a recent domestic news story - that the zombie virus is a mutant strain of Mad Cow Disease. So, should you feel so inclined, Dead Meat might be viewed as a sober warning about mankind's ecological recklessness.
Fans of McMahon's notorious short Braineater, which also featured Eoin Whelan and his cudgel, will be pleased to hear that Dead Meat is every bit as gruesome, and hilarious as its predecessor. It is, however, only fair to point out to readers used to watching films made in Southern California that the cinematography is often absurdly stygian, the dialogue occasionally inaudible and the acting not always up to RSC standards. Great fun, nonetheless.
