DVD review: Meat Market (Video 2000)

Two ex-security agents discover what may be the real cause of what the TV news reports as animal attacks. Argenta (Claire Westby) and Shahrokh (Paul Pedrosa) are former employees of a company they knew to be conducting bizarre medical experiments. What has resulted are not animal attacks, but attacks by humans - turned into vicious, decomposing, cannibalistic zombies. Their efforts to stem the violence in vain, hunted by the authorities, Shahrokh and Argenta escape the city just as it is engulfed by chaos. Their only hope lies in finding and organizing the few remaining survivors. What they find - three vampire women armed with high-tech weaponry, a deranged & washed-up Mexican wrestler, a wounded soldier, and a scientist who may know more than he lets on - offer more questions than answers. These few must band together to defeat the hordes of the undead before they are themselves consumed by the new order! Meat Market is written and directed by Brian Clement. The acting is really bad but the camerawork and editing of this shot on video feature is pretty decent and there are some really cool and atmospheric shots/scenes. The gore, all practical make-up fx, aren't bad but the high light of the film is the make-up fx design of the zombies which are very reminiscent of the living dead found in Fulci´s Zombie (1979), and I like that the zombies are of the slowly moving variety. Some of the zombies are really nice! If you want T & A you´ll find it here, topless nudity, shower scenes, lesbian sex and so on.
This review is based on the region all DVD release from Crypt Keeper which is uncut.
Rating: 3½ out of 7. I have some difficulty rating this flick. Let´s just say that Meat Market is perhaps a bit too ambitious for it´s very limited shoe string budget, it´s a example of trying to do too much with too little as it now feels unfocused and a bit confused. Add to this a somewhat excentric plot, we get not one but to wtf moments as we first get a trio of lesbian vampires with laser guns and later a Mexican wrestler so let´s just say that this flick isn't for everyone..


/JL