Dead Meat
is a horror commentary channel on YouTube founded by James A. Janisse of The Practical Folks in 2017.
The channel's primary draw is The Kill Count series, where James tallies up the body count in horror movies while offering commentary and trivia on the films covered. At the end of each Kill Count, the numbers are tallied up and broken down before the film is awarded a "Golden Chainsaw" and "Dull Machete" for the best and worst kill, respectively.
Besides the Kill Count, other series on the channel include Cut Comparison (in which James compares alternate versions of the same film to demonstrate the differences and determine which is the better watch), What's Your Favorite Scary Movie? (in which James interviews well-known figures such as actors, content creators, and wrestlers on their favorite horror movies), and Production Tales From Hell (in which Chauncey K. Robinson examines the Troubled Production behind certain horror movies and the reasons that they ended up being so hard to make). The channel is also home to the Dead Meat Podcast, a series hosted by Chelsea Rebecca, who is James' wife and helps design a large amount of the channel's merch. Further video topics include James' various trips to horror conventions.
The channel is named in reference to a line from Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, a line repeated in longer versions of the channel intro.
Now includes a Gag Dub Series called They Talk, created by Zoran R. Gvojic, James' editor and the creator of Low Carb Comedy.
In April 2024, a spinoff channel called Dead Meat Presents was launched, where all non-Kill Count content would be transferred so that the large difference in numbers of views for those videos from Kill Counts would stop affecting how YouTube's algorithms presents Dead Meat's videos.
Dead Meat contains examples of:
- Action Girl: James is a huge supporter of leading women and rejects the idea of feeling emasculated by a woman in power. When it comes to representation, James appreciates it when women are written as people, not put on a pedestal or blatantly written as sex objects.James: I especially love that she wrote a movie with a predominantly female cast, and did so in a way that's truly feminist - just let women be people.Brea Grant: We write these really great roles for women, but they're always, like, up on these pedestals. But I wanted to see a woman... have a lot of flaws. And all of the female characters have a lot of flaws.
- Author Appeal: James is a big fan of Star Wars and David Bowie and frequently references them in his videos. In particular, he expresses an Even the Guys Want Him level of admiration in the A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge Kill Count for two random patrons in the S&M bar that resemble David Bowie. James is also a fan of wrestling and was overjoyed to hear how some of his favorite wrestlers were fans of his channel and wanted to appear on "What's Your Favorite Scary Movie?" to talk about their favorite horror movies.
- Benevolent Boss: One of his points of praise for the films of Rob Zombie is that, even if he feels their content can at times be tasteless, cold, and overly edgy, he's never heard anyone say a bad word about him as a director, with him supposedly getting involved and being helpful. While he sometimes criticizes the films and makes some critiques and jokes about his dialogue and characters, Janisse has nothing but praise for Zombie himself.
- Every Scar Has a Story: James has a scar on his shoulder; the scar is a result of a cancer scare. He used to tan excessively as part of a fashion trend, and he developed a mole that he didn't have examined until a year later. It had to be surgically removed because the doctors told him it could be cancerous, and he was eventually clean of melanoma after the surgery. He now deeply regrets his part in the tanning trend, and he implores his audience to take responsibility for their own health.
- Fanservice: James is not a big fan of the trope, and is usually unimpressed and often very critical of the gratuitous nudity and sex scenes prevalent in the movies he covers, finding them unnecessary. One reason he praises It Follows is because it doesn't rely on sex scenes to emphasize the monster's representation of sexuality and STDs.
- Final Girl: The Dead Meat podcast had an entire episode dedicated to the trope and the book that spawned it.
- Formerly Fit: In a Q&A, James explained how he used to be a huge gym enthusiast as he took up a training routine that made him a muscular build. However, he had to undo the routine because of how high maintenance it was. James has taken up an alternate routine and has set up a personal gym in his house with Chelsea.
- Gag Dub: They Talk!, a show where the members of the Dead Meat crew play the voices of the silent killers of horror movies.
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: James and Chelsea discuss this in the Final Girl episode on the Dead Meat Podcast. James posits that a character's gender isn't necessarily a deciding factor in the death since any character in a horror movie is in danger, but he does note that, while men often die more in horror films, women tend to get slower and more graphic deaths. He cites Saw 3D as an example, where Joyce is killed horrifically by being slowly burned alive in front of her husband Bobby, despite doing nothing to deserve it and being killed only to punish Bobby for lying about his experiences with Jigsaw.
- Mood Whiplash: From about eight minutes into Podcast Episode #7 "Real Life Saw Traps."Chelsea: So, torture throughout history has been used as a means to control social order, it's why the inquisitions happened, right. Oh my God, there's a kitty-cat."
- MST3K Mantra: Invoked in the podcast episode on Snakes on a Plane. The movie is praised for this since it knows exactly what the people are there for, and it won't spend time explaining itself or its plot holes (in fact, they point out the presence of Samuel Jackson's character makes no sense).
- Nice Guy: Black Comedy and anger towards the third Last Summer film aside, James is genuinely kindhearted on and off camera and wants his audience to be the same.
- Not Distracted by the Sexy: James isn't a fan of unnecessary fanservice, often regarding those scenes as gratuitous.
- Rhymes on a Dime: James is prone to rhyming while talking about certain characters.
- Troubled Production: Invoked, in the series called "Production Tales From Hell", hosted by Chauncey K. Robinson, focusing on the on-set problems horror films dealt with throughout production, starting with Poltergeist (1982). In the series, Robinson details the ideas behind horror movies coming to life, the struggles to get the films made behind the camera, any trouble in post-production, troubles with distribution and marketing, and the lasting legacy of the films' hectic productions which may contribute to their infamy.
