An absolute cert for 2004’s most splendid, nay, historic idea, Conor McMahon’s Leitrim based mad-cow zombie flick utilises its inherently gothic setting so damned well, you find yourself marvelling that no-one has taken the horror movie to Pat McCabe(ish) country before.
More importantly – and like, wow – thanks to Mr. McMahon and producers Edward King and Michael Griffin (the diseased young minds behind the Horrorthon festival) our state finally has a zombie movie to call its own. And a proper revolting zombie movie at that. Isn’t evolution fun?
In noble generic fashion, Dead Meat kicks off with two unfortunate tourists getting stranded in a Leitrim now blighted by a zombifying strain of BSE. Within minutes, Helena (Araujo), the film’s unfortunate Spanish heroine, finds herself besieged by reanimated corpses, including her now infected companion. In a Leitrim so depopulated there’s not even a German in sight, Helena winds up with local gravedigger, Desmond (Muyllaert), plus a demented hurling instructor (Whelan) and his strapping goonish missus.
Together they battle legions of vitae-challenged flesh-eaters, a kiddies’ party of the undead (replete with spooky clown) and a maniacal murderous cow. Stumbling through thickets and woodlands, our survivors variously inflict death by shovel, death by stiletto, death by slither and an exquisite eye gouging with a vacuum cleaner upon their ravenous foes.
While packed with such original and supremely gooey moments, Dead Meat also showcases a canny awareness of the greater works of Romero, Carpenter and Raimi. In common with these seminal texts, the occasionally murky visuals and muffled acoustics happily add to the chaos and down-in-the-cellar mystery.
Yet while delightfully steeped in all things rabid and undead, the film’s greatest pleasures are rather more parochial. In Eoin Whelan’s hurley-wielding zombie-destroyer, Dr. Croke’s visions of banishing the ‘pernicious effeminising influence of the coloniser’ with a swing of the ash may finally have come to pass. A humbling reminder that in the event of a zombie holocaust sadistic GAA coaches will be our greatest and last line of defence.
I trust you will all seek Dead Meat out like a vaccine for a particularly virulent strain of bacillus pestus. If you don’t we’re never likely to be blessed with a Roscommon Chainsaw Massacre. How much longer can we, as a nation, go without?