Meat Market

Hooray! Rising independent UK DVD producers Cryptkeeper show yet again that they are fully behind upcoming indie filmmakers with yet another cool and welcomingly unrated gore soaked release…'Meat Market'.

Right, first off there's two things that should be made clear, firstly 'Meat Market' is a low budget shot on video production and although this can often put many off even viewing this I would ask that you ignore any preconceptions and give this one a bash, more so as my second point is that 'Meat Market' is not only a splatter filled zombie flick but a great fun one too!

Plot? Well come on, it's a low budget zombie flick so don't go expecting much…the first half of the film is actually simply a mix of zombie set piece tributes scammed from the filmmakers loves for such flicks as Night/Dawn/Day of the Dead with a hint of Rodriguez's vampire shoot outs ala Dusk till Dawn as our two heroes Argenta and Shahrokh go about their zombie attack survivalist motions. Where the film takes a wide diversion from the usual scenario though is when it swiftly sticks its tongue firmly in its cheek by firstly introducing some heavy artillery vampire chicks then perhaps best of all a very badly (in the good sense) dubbed Santo-esque Mexican wrestler. So following a pretty much po faced first half of Romero inspired zombiegedon the film welcomingly degenerates into some low budget genre 'fun' with the newly united super team going about their heroic business.

But does it work? Well, happily indeed very much so - sure it's by no means perfect, the film tries hard to over reach its restrictive budget and occasionally suffers for it, the first half of the film could easily have lost any sense of direction being consumed by the Romero inspired set pieces and at times the lighting is annoyingly lacking so you miss out on some scenes of poorly lit mayhem but on the other hand, the film has a great epic sense of proportion that screams out for these folk to get more funding for future productions. Many of the aforementioned set pieces are visually inspired and make for delightful viewing and the gory effects scenes are top notch throughout. When the heroes get together in the latter half of the movie we find a film that is both refreshingly original and highly amusing making 'Meat Market' a fun gore soaked splatter movie that genre fans should enjoy. So whilst I wish the producers had been given some serious funding to make this film as 'big' as it deserves to be, writer/director Brian Clement should be very proud of how he has transferred his vision to the small screen.

Now what about this release from our friends at Crypt Keeper? Well, the image and sound presentation on the film is as good as you're going to get from a low budget feature such as this. The image is strong with the only notable flaw being the poor lighting in some scenes from the shoot itself giving the film a very dark look and of course the print doesn't escape that 'shot on video' look either - but I would hope that with this in mind you would go into a film like this with an open mind and prepare yourself simply to be entertained by this fun low budget shocker. Crypt Keeper were one of the first UK companies (since the Video Nasty escapades of 1984) to understandably choose not to submit a film to the BBFC (film censors) when they released the stunning 'Scrapbook' and have done the same again with this release of 'Meat Market' - the concern this time perhaps not as much for the extensive zombie gore but most likely for the scenes of brief soft core shenanigans being blended in with scenes of bloody gore (boobs and blood have always irked the censors), so yet again the UK genre fan should rightly be applauding the folk at Crypt Keeper for their commendable respect for the genre fan (could you ever see oiks like Vipco going down such a honorable route? No chance!) Surprisingly although Cryptkeeper have to date been a company renowned for unheralded special editions 'Meat Market' comes to us with only a trailer for the movie as the only extra feature, but this is no biggie as it's the film itself we're here for and having it unrated and uncut should be plenty to keep UK horror fans smiling!

'Meat Market' is an amusing gory romp that tips it's hat to not only the zombie genre but will have vampire and Santo fans chuckling too, creator Brian Clement has laid out his horror CV for all to see and we can only hope he gets funding to produce something with a more substantial budget soon. If like myself, you're keen to see who the genre filmmakers of tomorrow are and have a tolerance for shot on video productions then this release from Cryptkeeper will make for essential viewing - check it out!

Review by Alan Simpson