Released for the first time officially in the UK with SHUDDER, Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker is one of the infamous “Video Nasties” that the BBFC condemned the production of back in the 1980s. Directed by William Asher, who was mostly known for directing surf films in the 1960s, Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker is something of an outlier in his filmography. Also known as The Evil Protege or (rather strangely) Night Warning, the film follows an orphaned teenager named Billy (Jimmy McNichol) who lives all alone with his aunt (played by Susan Tyrrell) in the woods. Billy hopes that he can earn a basketball scholarship so he can go off to college, but the controlling aunt wants to keep Billy close to her side by any means necessary. As her grip on the teen becomes looser and looser, so too does her mental state grow more unbalanced as she desperately tries to keep Billy all to herself.
Within minutes it becomes clear why Butcher, Baker can be seen as something of a cult classic. It’s a performance-centric film and no one stands out more than Susan Tyrrell as the delightfully wicked Aunt Cheryl. Known in later years for films like Cry Baby, Tyrrell stands out as one of the creepiest psycho killers of the 1980s. Her expressions and mannerisms balance delicately between the overbearing adulation of a mother and the obsessive playfulness of a lover. As an actor, she goes between stern discipline, lover’s jealousy, and flatout cuckoo for cocoa puffs often within the same line of dialogue. In the wrong hands, Aunt Cheryl could be a one-note character and in the kind of film that this is, it would be easy to give such a lacklustre delivery. Susan Tyrrell is remarkable however and it makes you wish that something more came after such a captivatingly disturbing performance.
That being said, there is a reason why Butcher, Baker was also forgotten about for a long stretch of time. It’s a bit of a slog to get through. Definitely categorized as a video nasty more for its incestuous tones than its gore, not a lot happens in the brisk 90 minute runtime. In a fit of anger, Aunt Cheryl murders a handyman uninterested in her body and the investigation takes up most of the remaining film. With the rest of the cast working with far less than the central antagonist, the movie flounders because there’s no one engaging enough to invest in. As a slasher film it doesn’t go far enough with its bodycount and as a twisted drama it barely scratches the surface of its characters to be compelling.
There is a surprising twist with one of its characters. The despicable detective Joe Carlson (played by Bo Svenson) whose horrible homophobia makes him truly detestable makes the film shockingly sympathetic towards its gay characters in a way that would not be expected for 1982. That doesn’t quite justify watching it though. Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker stands out because of Susan Tyrrell and it’s at least worth watching once for her above all else.
Chronicler of the Dark 