Thankfully, I only paid $3.99 for "The Butcher" from a drug store bargain DVD bin, therefore I wasn't expecting much from it. Good thing, too, because "The Butcher" was utterly derivative, totally nonsensical, and ultimately pretty damned silly all the way through. Take a bit of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," some of "Wrong Turn," a piece of "People Under the Stairs" and boom, you've got your "Butcher." Even casual horror film viewers will say to themselves "Where have I seen this before?" at least once during its run time.
"The Butcher" doesn't waste much time with unimportant frills like back story or character development; it just starts with the nasty stuff virtually as soon as the opening credits are finished rolling. A group of annoying twenty-somethings (an obnoxious jock in a "popped collar" shirt, two lesbians, an African-American girl who's in a wedding dress for some nebulous reason, a "nice" guy, and a "tough" girl) are all on their way to Las Vegas for a weekend of partying. They take a supposed "short cut" (never a good idea) down a desolate country road where they're menaced by a scarred guy in a beat up truck. Popped Collar Guy takes offense at this and pursues the truck, which leads to him crashing into a tree and wrecking the car. This also causes one of the lesbians, who'd been hanging out of the sun roof, to get cut in half on a low hanging tree limb. (Ouch!) So our group is now down to five, and after a bit of arguing they set off through the countryside in search of help. Coming to a run down farm house in the middle of nowhere, these morons soon find out that the house is occupied by the "Butcher" of the title and his family of demented rednecks. Poorly staged mayhem ensues. The idiots spend half of the movie barricaded inside the killer's house (!!!), where they wander around looking at filthy rooms full of doll heads, dishes of human bones and other flotsam and saying "What is that?" "I don't know" rather than, say, trying to find the back door, or at least some weaponry to fight back against the killer. About halfway through we meet the Butcher's wife, who hides in the house's basement and who apparently went nuts due to her inability to have a child. After several more (ineffective) death scenes, the "nice guy" manages to escape the house (leaving his friends behind??? Yeah, I know...logic has no place here) and brings a sheriff to the property, but the psycho couple make short work of him and eventually we're down to "nice guy" and "tough chick" for the final showdown. Even if you've never seen the movie, you will probably be able to tell which one of them is going to get out alive.
"The Butcher" may not be the worst movie I've ever seen, but Lord, it isn't good. The characters are cardboard cut-outs, the killers are Xeroxed from much better films, and the whole thing just comes off pointless and repetitive. Gorehounds who aren't terribly picky may want to check it out because "The Butcher" has more than its fair share of the red stuff but most viewers will just want it to end as quickly as possible.
"The Butcher" doesn't waste much time with unimportant frills like back story or character development; it just starts with the nasty stuff virtually as soon as the opening credits are finished rolling. A group of annoying twenty-somethings (an obnoxious jock in a "popped collar" shirt, two lesbians, an African-American girl who's in a wedding dress for some nebulous reason, a "nice" guy, and a "tough" girl) are all on their way to Las Vegas for a weekend of partying. They take a supposed "short cut" (never a good idea) down a desolate country road where they're menaced by a scarred guy in a beat up truck. Popped Collar Guy takes offense at this and pursues the truck, which leads to him crashing into a tree and wrecking the car. This also causes one of the lesbians, who'd been hanging out of the sun roof, to get cut in half on a low hanging tree limb. (Ouch!) So our group is now down to five, and after a bit of arguing they set off through the countryside in search of help. Coming to a run down farm house in the middle of nowhere, these morons soon find out that the house is occupied by the "Butcher" of the title and his family of demented rednecks. Poorly staged mayhem ensues. The idiots spend half of the movie barricaded inside the killer's house (!!!), where they wander around looking at filthy rooms full of doll heads, dishes of human bones and other flotsam and saying "What is that?" "I don't know" rather than, say, trying to find the back door, or at least some weaponry to fight back against the killer. About halfway through we meet the Butcher's wife, who hides in the house's basement and who apparently went nuts due to her inability to have a child. After several more (ineffective) death scenes, the "nice guy" manages to escape the house (leaving his friends behind??? Yeah, I know...logic has no place here) and brings a sheriff to the property, but the psycho couple make short work of him and eventually we're down to "nice guy" and "tough chick" for the final showdown. Even if you've never seen the movie, you will probably be able to tell which one of them is going to get out alive.
"The Butcher" may not be the worst movie I've ever seen, but Lord, it isn't good. The characters are cardboard cut-outs, the killers are Xeroxed from much better films, and the whole thing just comes off pointless and repetitive. Gorehounds who aren't terribly picky may want to check it out because "The Butcher" has more than its fair share of the red stuff but most viewers will just want it to end as quickly as possible.