Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (1981)


This is a strange title for an even stranger movie.  It doesn't make much sense in the context of the plot, but that just adds to the general mess that this movie is.  It was re-released in 1983 as Night Warning, which sounds like it should be a nautical horror film, while the original title sounds like there should be some sort of supernatural angle.  It is neither, and while it is a movie that a number of people like - it was nominated for a Saturn award in 1982 - for me it was like watching a car wreck.  

Billy (Jimmy McNichol) is a 17-year-old living with his single aunt Cheryl (Susan Tyrell).  His parents died in a car accident when he was three years old and she has raised him.  He is a talented basketball player and enamored with his girlfriend Julie (Julia Duffy).  Tension develops when Billy lets his aunt know that he intends to go to the University of Denver along with Julie, and that his coach, Tom Landers (Steve Eastin), has informed him that a scout has come to see him play.  

One night Billy returns to find a man named Phil Brody (Caskey Swaim) struggling with Cheryl, who appears to have stabbed him.  Brody dies and Cheryl claims he was attempting to rape her, something neither Detective Joe Carlson (Bo Svenson) nor Sergeant Cook (Britt Leach) believe - but for different reasons.  Carlson discovers that Brody was Coach Landers's boyfriend and threatens to out him unless he resigns, and begins working on a theory that Billy killed Brody due to jealousy.  Meanwhile, Cook starts looking into Cheryl, finding some disturbing information about her past. 

To the movie's credit neither Landers nor Brody are treated as the normal swishy stereotypes typical of most Hollywood films at the time.  Carlson is outright treated as the villain, although Aunt Cheryl's attitude toward homosexuals is no better, and while he seems to accept Landers Billy's attitude toward any insinuation that he is gay is what one would expect.  There is no hint that he may be closeted, but there is worse: Cheryl has an obvious desire for him that goes beyond being a guardian, leading to tension between her and Julie.  

This is where things get messy.  The movie is ostensibly about an overbearing female parental figure who takes the care of her ward into inappropriate territory and becomes homicidal when it is obvious that he wants to break free and live is own life.  Susan Tyrell plays the role well, becoming more and more disheveled and erratic as her fears of abandonment manifest and Billy becomes more independent.  This should be the main plot, but Carlson adds a second antagonist.  On this end Bo Svenson also does an amazing job as a detective that has no business being a police officer as his own prejudices cloud his abilities to do his job.  

A third antagonist arrives in Eddie (Bill Paxton), a rival member of his basketball team, in a more normal adolescent conflict of personalities.  One would think that having this many challenges would bring out some inner demons of Billy's, but for most of the film he walks through life as if none of these bad things are happening around him, even when his aunt starts drugging him and a number of truths come out.  Also, because of so much happening, a good portion of the movie drags despite Svenson and Tyrell's performances.  

It is the last act where things get going but, like the opening scenes, it suddenly feels like a different film.  The opening pretty much is different, directed by Michael Miller, who was fired shortly into production, and with cinematography by future Speed and Twister director Jan de Bont.  It shows the deaths of Billy's parents in graphic detail and in a way that William Asher, who typically worked on sitcoms like Bewitched and I Love Lucy, can't match.  It is obvious that Asher is not comfortable with the horror genre, but the last third is memorable because Tyrell gets to let loose as Cheryl loses her last grip on sanity.  

This movie does have some good elements, so its cult status is understandable.  The problem is that, like many exploitation films, it is all over the place.  Pitting Carlson and Cheryl against each other would have been much more interesting, as would a better actor than McNichol in the role of Billy.  The creepiness that Asher and main writer Steve Breimer hoped to bring to the movie rarely materializes because there is just too much being attempted. 

Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (1981)
Time: 96 minutes
Starring: Jimmy McNichol, Susan Tyrell, Julia Duffy, Bo Svenson
Director: William Asher

 

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