Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker is a modest little horror film in which Cheryl Roberts (played by Susan Tyrrell) becomes the legal guardian of her nephew Billy Lynch (Jimmy McNichol) after his parents are killed in a violent car crash. With Billy celebrating his 17th birthday and considering where to go to college, Cheryl begins to concoct a plan to ensure that her care over Billy will continue indefinitely.

It’s not too often when we get a movie where a straight character is in need of a gay ally, but it is one of the themes present in Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker. It’s also refreshing when our cast of characters don’t come off as cannon fodder for our slasher but as people making logical choices.

That said, let’s address the two larger than life characters in this movie: Aunt Cheryl and Bo Svenson’s Detective Joe Carlson. Cheryl is as overbearing as Margaret White (Piper Laurie) in Carrie (1976), as flighty as Aunt Martha (Desiree Gould) in Sleepaway Camp (1983), and as diabolical as Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) in Misery (1990). Cheryl has a bit of Annie’s unhealthy obsession with her nephew Billy. Tyrrell’s performance is anything but subtle, but she has some magnetic expressions and mannerisms that only add to the unhinged and manipulative performance. I can’t stop thinking of how she clutches her cross at Billy’s big game after drugging him.

Carlson on the other hand is a discriminatory detective whose homophobic bias prevents him from considering any possibility that the death of Phil Brody (Caskey Swaim) is the murderous result of a love triangle between Billy, his coach Tom Landers (Steve Eastin), and Phil. Svenson’s performance will probably get under people’s skins, but we love to have a villain we can hate. Svenson does nothing short of that. At times, he even seems to be enjoying himself.

McNichol’s is fine as Billy, but his character is too naive. Sure he’ll stand up to Cheryl here and there, but he’s more reactive than proactive, and it’s characters such as Julie Linden (Julia Duffy), Margie (Marcia Lewis), and Sargent Cook (Britt Leach) who are a breath of fresh air in this kind of movie, because of the smarter decisions they all make. For example, Julie stands up to Joe when he accuses Billy of being gay. In a lesser story, Julie would just believe what she’s being told in order to create an artificial sense of drama.

Margie is a friend of Cheryl’s but once something seems off, Margie begins to investigate versus shrugging it off. Cook is a sergeant in Joe’s precinct and suspects that Billy is innocent. When Joe doesn’t listen to reason, Cook begins to take a more active role in the case.

In addition to those characters, I was pleasantly surprised with the character Coach Tom. Horror has always been a progressive genre when it comes to the depiction of LGBTQ+ characters and Tom is no exception. The character isn’t played for laughs and isn’t a stereotype. One could argue he’s closeted in order to keep his job at the school, but it doesn’t change that this character is handled with as much respect with who he is as much as any of the other characters.

Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker isn’t necessarily groundbreaking for the slasher genre. In fact, the story at times feels a bit convoluted but for all the problems that Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker has: the corny-sounding score, the poor editing (i.e. see the fight between Cheryl and Julie), and the hurried ending via a text crawl, this movie is a fun and bloody time that will have you wondering who will make it out alive.

Rating: 3.5/5.

Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker is now available at Severin (on sale) on both Blu-ray and 2-Disc 4K UHD with exclusive slipcover.

One of the bonus features on the disc is an “interview” with Susan Tyrrell. It’s not really an interview; she reveals that she had a terrible time making the movie, as much as it becomes clips of Tyrrell’s reaction to seeing the movie film for the first time, which is a fun time.

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The writer of this piece is: Laurence Almalvez
Laurence tweets from @IL1511

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