kindertrauma

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I promise I'm not going to give anything away. I was almost going to skip reviewing 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE altogether until I realized I was suffering from some kind of Stockholm Syndrome and that the clever marketing of this flick had hypnotized me into thinking that mum's the word…or else. I have to admit though that there was something so luxurious about seeing a movie cold and knowing next to zero about it. I for one try to make a point of NOT following the horror news sites. I feel like they are constantly ruining things for me and I miss the old days before the Internet when movies held more mystique. Still, I'd be lying if I said my assumptions about this movie were that far off the mark. It followed the psychic map in my head pretty closely but don't worry there's still a treasure trove of worthwhile surprises.

JOHN GOODMAN, JOHN GOODMAN, JOHN GOODMAN. The man is a marvel. I just want to thank this flick right off the bat for fully utilizing this incredible actor's talent. This could very well be his best role. He's like this giant spinning disco ball reflecting every possible color in the emotional spectrum. Ya love him, you hate him, he's endearing, he's terrifying; the only thing constant is his brilliance. And there's probably not many young actresses who could hold their own and not disappear in GOODMAN's presence but MARY ELIZABETH WINSTEAD is up to the task and then some. I like her, she's got an earthy tomboy next door thing going on that reminds me of some of my favorite seventies actresses (and I hope this role leads folks to give 2011's THE THING a more open-minded chance). The third major player is JOHN GALLAGHER, JR. and he's remarkably real and engaging too. Geez, I was just saying in that PIN post the other day that I was hungry for some satisfying genre characters and here they are! These are people I do not mind being trapped with. There's a kind of clubhouse vibe going on for much of the movie that made me wish it would never end. Why does the song "I Think We're Alone Now?" have to be so short? If you are a montage fetishist like myself, get ready for ambrosia.

And now for the not so good news. In the near future, you're probably going to hear a dissenting minority bitching about the film's ending. Count me among those sad crabapples. The ending in no way nullifies the precision nail-biting suspense and noble character building that came before it but it still feels like gilding a lily to me. It's slightly off and somehow wrong like MERYL STREEP eating a McRibb. Without ruining anything, lets just say hypothetically that the ending involves a jar of pickles, for some reason this movie goes out of its way to feature a generic, store brand jar of pickles. I don't get it when they could have lost zero face and just handed over the name brand jar of pickles the audience is clearly craving. Even I, whose motto is usually "screw the audience" feels the poor saps should be thrown a bone (or at least something above a bobo brand of pickles) once in a while. I get that no means no when it comes to a movie delivering on the goods that it alluded to even in its title but something about this withholding feels vaguely stingy to me.

It's no biggie, the flick is still better than anyone has the right to expect in most departments; it's just that these days when all one has to do is wait a couple months to see something at home at literally a 90 % discount they might want to know what they're getting into. My theater was even offering this movie in IMAX for a few extra bucks which is kind of nuts considering it's as fish-tank constrained as LIFEBOAT (1944) , ROPE (1988) or COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN (1982) for nine tenths of its runtime. Oh well, its still a nail-biting hoot and a half and the acting is indeed worth the price of admission alone but…is it really so difficult to hand over the pickles? I know my opinion holds zero value in the world but I feel its my duty to share with anyone else who might have moths flying out of their wallet that my favorite scene in the whole flick involves the assembly of a jigsaw puzzle. Do with that information what you will. Anyway this movie is super great until it slips slightly and becomes only super good.

Find the Differences:: 10 Cloverfield Lane

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hey, the super mysterious 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE is landing in theaters today! How can you resist seeing it? I can't. Based on this poster I'm thinking the plot involves a giant killer mailbox and if that's the case, I'm going to sue them for stealing my idea! In the meantime, can you find the ten differences between images A and image B? Good luck!

Happy Anniversary:: The Hills Have Eyes (2006)!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Would you believe that this very March 10th marks the tenth, as in one decade, anniversary of that THE HILLS HAVE EYES (2006) remake? What in the world? Usually I don't remember such details but this flick holds a special place in my heart because my very first movie date with your Aunt John was to a matinee of this bad boy. How romantic! Of course, I already knew we were compatible because I spied a VHS copy of THE BABY (1973) on his TV set, he dug the 4AD chumminess of THE PIXIES and THROWING MUSES and was unabashedly in awe of the then somewhat recent airing of RIDING THE BUS WITH MY SISTER (2005) but spending a fine weather day indoors watching an unsuspecting family being randomly terrorized sort of sealed the deal. Wow, the world was a very different place ten years ago, now that I think about it. The PUSSYCAT DOLLS were climbing the charts, LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT was still good because CHRIS MELONI hadn't left yet and your Aunt John and I were not yet able to get married but we were still able to rent movies from the local video store …so… it's difficult to say if society has gone in the right direction or not. One step forward, two steps back.

Some people don't like remakes and they can cry me a river because I'm not in the mood to list the super obvious titles that more than justify their existence. THE HILLS HAVE EYES is actually a perfect movie to get a modern update because the original, perpetually entertaining though it may be, does suffer from some dated hokeyness. The lone person who might have had a legitimate gripe about this remake is our late great pal WES CRAVEN and he happily produced it! Like many, CRAVEN was super impressed with the work of director ALEXANDRE AJA and his writing partner GREGORY LEVASSEUR after taking in HIGH TENSION (2003). Even with its slick new (I'm going to call it uggo-licious) paint job, THE HILLS HAVE EYES remains all kinds of signature guilt-trippy CRAVEN. You don't have to dig far in the dirt to find him stoking the (distinctly American) fear that building your dreams on someone else's nightmares may come back to haunt you ten fold. Indeed hardly a minute passes without a wound being salted and pointedly dad's guns and mom's prayers are little help in keeping the ugliness swept under the rug.

And yikes this is some fierce, wicked, unpleasant nerve-wracking business. If you don't think this movie is scary, what is wrong with you? Go to a doctor. No, don't be proud of yourself, there's something MISSING in you. You need help. Maybe I'm biased because this movie doesn't touch on, but stomps on, my biggest bugaboos. Here's a perfect recipe for Make-Me-Squirm Salad: A far from home road trip, local yokels with questionable dental hygiene, an environmentally unfriendly styrofoam container (containing a severed ear), outhouses, unclear showering facilities, excessive sunlight, excessive time spent with family, people being burned alive, dogs in danger, a gun pointed at a baby, smiling mannequins, daytime television, people with gigantic bulbous heads singing patriotic songs while asthmatically wheezing and the foreboding prospect of inevitable rape hanging in the air like a forgotten piñata on a rainy day…and that's just for starters. Just about the only thing in this flick that doesn't bite me like a bedbug is the found object, multi-colored bottle folk art that appears at the gas station. Thumbs up. I want to make one.

Let me shelve the anguish inducers for a moment and tell ya what I think is absolutely awesome in this movie (even though it will so clearly out me as having the brain of a 14-year-old action figure collector). It actually happens directly after my LEAST favorite part of the movie. Our hero is looking for his kidnapped baby and he comes across a rogue's gallery of mutants who culminate in the figure of a disturbing dude immobilized by his droopy gargantuan head. Then said mutant, who is listed as "Big Brain" but should be called "Mr. Exposition," starts yapping about why the mutants are peeved as if simply being a mutant isn't enough to ruin one's day. I hate this part. If you think "mansplaining" is annoying try "mutantsplainng" on for size. But…just when you start getting twitchy…in charges trademark super-mutant "Pluto" and he's resplendent. At this point HILLS becomes a full on monster/slasher flick and if there's any mini-subgenre that makes me gleeful, monster/slasher is it! You know like, HELL NIGHT, THE FUNHOUSE, multiple FRIDAY THE 13th movies (but mostly PART 2 and 3 and certainly not 1 or 5) and your WRONG TURN(s). I love it. It's a harsh as hell, surprisingly suspenseful showdown that finishes with a clever tip of the hat to STRAW DOGS. It's so good it makes me wish this flick were less draining so I could watch it more often.

So anyway, Happy Anniversary THE HILLS HAVE EYES remake! You can be difficult to digest at times (I didn't need to see THAT) but what is horror if you are not getting your boundaries threatened every once in a while? Safe horror is for the birds (and now I just remembered the part where you showed a bird's head being bitten off). On the positive side, what wonderful performances you feature from the fantastic TED (SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, JOY RIDE) LEVINE as in way over his stubborn head pop and lovable genre legend KATHLEEN (TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, EVENT HORIZON, BREAKDOWN and WARNING SIGN) QUINLAN as committed-to-denial ma. Plus, kudos on landing duo TOMANDANDY (THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES) to craft your riveting score! Who knows, if Aunt John and I had gone to another movie that was playing that same week ten years ago like say, FAILURE TO LAUNCH, MADEA'S FAMILY REUNION or BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, maybe we would not have had such a squeamishly agreeable time. Maybe we might have gotten into a huge fight over one of those controversial titles and never spoken again! If that happened there would be no KINDERTRAUMA! Can you imagine anything worse? No need to answer that, THE HILLS HAVE EYES remake, I know for a fact you can.

Name That Arthouse Horror!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Ever since that WITCH movie strolled into town I keep hearing folks talking about "arthouse horror." Now, I'm not one to jump on a limiting label but if a buzz term helps a lesser seen gem get a leg up in the notoriety department, I'm all for it! I mean arthouse horror has been around forever, right? I'm sure not everyone would agree on what is and isn't arthouse horror but around here our motto is "Horror is where you find it" and I think we all know art is in the eye of the beholder as well. The way I see it, as long as someone is either rolling their eyes or checking their watches, you're doing something right! Anyway, below are 20 images from 20 movies that I figured could wear official arthouse horror t-shirts if they wanted to. How many do you recognize? And if I missed a favorite of yours, please feel free to share it!

Name That Trauma:: David H. L. on a Talking Tombstone TV Movie

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Love your website…I'm trying to track down a 70's made-for-TV movie that scared the crap out of me as a kid. The one thing I remember is that it had a woman who felt guilt over her aunt's or mother's death and the relative appeared in a dream (I think) as part of tombstone – like just her head sticking out and talking to the heroine. It terrified me to no end…any ideas what that might be?

Thanks!

Cordially,

David H.L.

For the Love of: Pin (1988)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

My parents are preparing to move and so they've been cleaning out the attic. This resulted in my mother sending me several boxes filled with some of my old stuff. We're talking tons of war torn FANGORIA, TWILIGHT ZONE and HEAVY METAL magazines from the early eighties (!!!), STAR WARS, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and WARLORD comic books (!!), PRISONER OF CELL BLOCK H, CAT PEOPLE and THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY movie tie-in paperbacks (!) and a slew of tiny self- painted D&D metal figurines… your standard treasure trove of nerdy memorabilia. I mean, what self-respecting teen in the eighties didn't proudly hang a STILL OF THE NIGHT (1982) poster on his or her bedroom wall?

Included in a package was my dear long-lost stuffed animal, Felix the Cat who (don't laugh) was once my go-to best friend. Poor Felix was trapped in a hot Texas attic for decades, which left him brittle and falling apart in places. I did my best to mend him but as I sewed him back together it only seemed to create fresh holes and tears. Geez, I wish I never saw TOY STORY because suddenly I found myself being hit with waves of guilt. How could I so coldly leave Felix in a dark box all these years? I did the best I could; I even swiped a jersey off of an unsuspecting Phillies Phantatic doll to hide Felix's more devastating injuries (it's sure to cause a loosing streak). Finally I placed Felix up on a high honored shelf where he should be relatively safe at least until I'm dead and gone.

In other words, I know first hand how a person can develop an attachment to an inanimate object and how that totem can seem to establish a personality all its own. It's all very irrational but the upside of Gepetto-esque magical thinking is that it helps me to better appreciate the greatness that is PIN (or PIN: A PLASTIC NIGHTMARE if you feel the need to fill your marquee). PIN was filmed in good old reliable Canada and released there in 1988 but it didn't hit my neck of the woods until the following year, bypassing a theatrical run and landing directly on VHS. Horror movies were still cleaning up at the box office at the time so PIN's no frills release lead me to believe that it must not be any great shakes but oh how very wrong that knee-jerk assumption was. As far as I'm concerned PIN, which is based on a novel by ANDREW NEIDERMAN (the Guy who authored THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE and now fittingly ghostwrites as V.C. ANDREWS) is one of the best, most satisfying, horror films of its decade… or any other.

In fact, if anyone ever asks me what might improve modern horror I think from now on I'll cut the conversation short and simply say "Watch PIN." In my mind it's not about ratings, levels of violence, jump-scares or hype, what makes or breaks a movie often (for me) are the characters. And I'm NOT talking about the old cliché of "liking" a character so that you care if they die, I don't have to "like" anyone, I just want them to be interesting enough to hold my interest, I just want to partially understand their motivations and I just want to believe they are there for a reason rather than standing as glorified chess piece props. Ironically, not only is PIN's lead character Leon more intriguing than those you are likely to bump into in most horror flicks but so is plastic "Pin" who only sorta partially exists in a make believe character's mind. Yep, PIN's not even real in the fake story he occupies but he's still more substantial and complex than your standard horror pawn. I also give PIN props for representing schizophrenia as less a gathering of various personalities than the tragic shattering of one.

PIN is like the JOHN IRVING novel of horror films and yes, that's a compliment. By the time the end credits roll the viewer feels as if they've grown up with the characters and have seen them at their best, worst and most vulnerable. We first meet siblings Leon and Ursula as tykes dealing with their parent's idiosyncrasies (that's polite for mental illnesses); Ma's got an OCD cleaning fetish and talented ventriloquist Pa's repressed enough to let a life size, see-through medical dummy do the talking when conversations turn to sex. (It certainly doesn't hurt that Dad is portrayed by the phenomenal TERRY O'QUIN between STEPFATHER gigs). Leon's budding illness allows him to mentally converse with Pin even when his dad isn't around and when both parents die in a horrible car accident (one in which Pin is creepily present), Leon's already tentative identity collapses and Pin begins to take the wheel. What's truly astounding is how sympathetically Leon's terrifying slip into insanity is handled. DAVID HEWLETT is so remarkable that I'd even feel comfortable comparing him to ANTHONY PERKINS in the PSYCHO films (and I do not do that lightly, folks!).

Speaking of PSYCHO, Leon and Pin easily earn an honored spot within the AVENGERS/EXPENDABLES coalition of favorite horror introverts that assemble regularly in my head. This fine alliance of fright flicks include the aforementioned PSYCHO, A REFLECTION OF FEAR (1972), BAD RONALD (1974), THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE (1976), THE ATTIC 1980) and just to prove I'm not entirely living in the past, 2012's fantastic EXCISION (which should have landed TRACI LORDS an Oscar nomination if you ask me) and 2014's underrated STARRY EYES. May I also submit for your approval MANIAC (1980) and its re-do (2012)? After all, gore doesn't magically erase the psychological plight of that duo. You can say all these folks are touched in the head but I prefer to think of them as courageous visionaries who refuse to let a little thing like reality stand in their way. I suppose one could write reams about PIN but since I'd never expect you to read a longer post than I would, this isn't the place for that. Instead, I'd just like to nudge anyone who hasn't seen PIN to seek it out as soon as possible. You never know, it could become your new best friend.

The Witch

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I liked THE WITCH. The cinematography is gorgeous (particularly a slobber-worthy, late night lantern-lit outdoors scene), the acting is across the board impressive (particularly RALPH INESON as the put upon patriarch. What a voice on that guy!) and there are more than a couple moments in this melancholy mood piece that can chill ya to the core (particularly a bit involving a raven that has branded itself into my noggin). That said, you have my full approval to skip it in theaters. That's right; don't go see it. I personally, wish I waited and watched it in the privacy of my own home in the wee hours, preferably during a relentless rainstorm. It's such an intimate, quiet outing that it deserves to be devoured alone and without a person chomping popcorn like a mule behind you. Furthermore, if you are wondering if this is one of those movies where all the critics lead you to believe that you are about to experience the next THE EXORCIST and then you go and see it and it's NOT the next THE EXORCIST — the answer is yes, it is one of those movies. Truth is kids, you're not getting your own THE EXORCIST so you might as well stop waiting. Folks were innocent back then and if you are reading this, then you are on the Internet and are therefore already jaded, corrupt and ruined.

That's the end of my review but I'll add some extra text just to justify the posting of more of these cool animal poster images! Um, THE WITCH is about this family during the olden timey days that try to forge a life for themselves and fail miserably at it. Eventually they all blame their crappy fortune on teenage daughter Thomasin (ANYA TAYLOR-JOY), which is understandable because she's the only one in the family who doesn't look like she fell out of VAN GOUGH's "The Potato Eaters" painting. Writer/ director ROBERT EGGERS does an exemplary job as far as atmosphere and historical accuracy goes and he's admirably able to make it seem as if nature itself is a malicious supernatural force. I also dig how he goes against the norm in the way information is disclosed, as it keeps the viewer perpetually on their toes and plowing through the dark. I'm afraid I'm going to have to watch THE WITCH a couple dozen more times before I can even start to think I know what's truly going on in it. Maybe I'm dumb. Probably. Oh well, I enjoyed THE WITCH but I can't say it knocked my socks off because my socks are still on. I know I'm supposed to either passionately love it or vehemently hate it but sorry, I'm more in the middle. It's basically everything I've ever asked for in that it's EYES OF FIRE (1983) if EYES OF FIRE was super pretty to look at but still I sit here feeling like I somehow missed a course of the meal.

You know what it is? I think this movie is relying too heavily on the assumption that I'm going to be scared of a talking goat! No way, I'd love to meet a talking goat! If I met a talking goat I would only want to hug it and be its best friend. Plus I'm pretty sure THE WITCH has it in mind to vilify a bunny? Again, no way. In closing, if conversing with animals is wrong, I don't want to be right. We shall meet again THE WITCH, on my own home turf! If nothing else, you truly are vexing. I like that.

Don't Look Now (1973)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I'm so glad I don't have kids. People who have kids (with all due respect) are insane. It's like multiplying your potential for an emotional Armageddon by a quadrillion percent. Maybe I'm just a worrywart; I don't understand how you'd ever let a kid out of your sight in the super deadly, arbitrary, calamity-baiting obstacle course that is our world. I have enough on my plate fretting about the fates of my felines. And I'm not talking about legitimate concerns like kitty cancer and urinary tract infections; I'm talking about if they sit in the window facing the street I fear somebody is going to throw a Molotov cocktail at them or maybe some teen rapscallions will shoot them with a BB gun or hit'em with a machete or… a flamethrower. Everybody who has seen THE EXTERMINATOR can back me up, flamethrowers are dangerous.

Even more troubling is the vague idea that somewhere under the sweet icing concern for the well being of my beloved fur babies hides the darker worry that if something should happened to them, I wouldn't be able to handle it and I would completely LOSE MY MIND… forever and ever and ever. That may sound overly dramatic but I've dealt with death before and I can tell you, that bitch is a bionic grizzly bear from the basement of hell. I don't remember fully and I don't want to. All I know is the whole universe cankers and everything wilts and then some callous, miasmic Demon masquerading as God snickers while cramming the entire planet into a cosmic trash bag for a couple dozen months. It's a bummer.

DON'T LOOK NOW is a masterpiece and don't even bother with it if you're the type that thinks that horror movies are all about finding your inner strength and foiling murderers with booby traps and karate chops. This flick is seeping in grief and its got real, legitimate death floating around in it. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the best movies are not movies at all, they are spells and this particular spell is a doozy. If you're ever of the mind to publicly accuse a person of witchcraft, let that person be NICOLAS ROEG (not that DAPHNE DU MAURIER's hands are zestfully clean). I swear a billow of smoke appears in this film and it's all that billow of smoke can do to not morph into a screaming skull. I know it wants to, it knows that I know it wants to… and thank all that is holy that the scene ends before it does.

DON'T LOOK NOW features two acting greats, both of whom deliver career high performances. DONALD SUTHERLAND and JULIE CHRISTIE are John and Laura Baxter, distraught parents processing the recent death of their young daughter Christine. The couple's differing methods of dealing with the tragic loss slowly creates a chasm between them. The two travel to Venice for John's work and as Laura finds solace in two strange, questionable sisters (one of whom claims to be receiving assuring psychic messages from Christine), John's repairing of a church mirrors his frustrating attempts to piece back together his faith. It's as if Laura's embracing of the unknown allows her to move on and John's inability to accept the unexplainable tethers him to the ground. Laura is not exactly religious (She offers, "I'm kind to children and animals" as an apology to a priest) but she finds a way to allow hope back into her life. John's stagnation (not to mention his outright rejection of his own warning intuition) seems to only invite more of the darkness we all try to avoid.

Because yep, DEATH does indeed return as if responding to an engraved invitation, as if John's spiritual wavering is the ultimate red carpet. DEATH (I won't be too spoiler-y ) pretty much shakes its head at how very, very off base John's been for at least as long as the run of the film. And yeah, the end of DON'T LOOK NOW still to this day, gives me an ice wedgie, gives me a doom noogie, gives me an existential purple nurple. ROEG's devious shuffling of time and his abandonment of the linear evokes an infinite bad dream concoction that leaves you thinking that the adage "In the midst of life we are in death" may be a gross understatement. Do our lives flash before our eyes when we die or are our lives ONLY a flash before our eyes as we die? I don't even know what I just said but I do know that I don't like the sound of it. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a flashback montage.

Clearly this flick is crazy making. I better snap out of this solemn swamp mood before I attract a hooded ghoulie. Maybe it'll help if I focus on ROEG's brilliantly subtle gaslighting skills or how lovely it is just to take in CHRISTIE's elated face exclaiming, "Christine is still with us!" after Laura's fainting spell or the exquisite cinematography that makes the entire city of Venice look like a haunted house or the fact that this monumental movie marks the great PINO DONAGGIO's very first feature length film score! Ha, take that death troll!! Can you believe that the first time I tried to watch this baby as a dumb teen I fell asleep? I blame it on the rain. Anyway, if you've given this one a chance before and it didn't float your gondola don't sweat it. I promise you it will come back to finish the job later. In the words of Wednesday Addams when asked why she dressed like somebody died, "Wait."

Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (1982)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

All I wanted for Christmas this year was the DVD of BUTCHER, BAKER NIGHTMARE MAKER (1982) and I'm happy to report that tiny lil' dream became a reality. Now that the pined for item is captured and shelved, one of the many nagging voices in my head can finally shut up. Once upon a time, wrongly thinking the flick's DVD debut was imminent, I allowed my VHS tape (under the title NIGHT WARNING) to fall into the wrong hands and wouldn't you know it, the cursed thing stood me up like a bucked-tooth prom date. Worse still, when it finally was released, the universe began a cruel campaign of placing obstacle after excruciating obstacle between me and my coveted prize! It's over now. I shouldn't salt the gaping wounds. I just mean to point out that there are movies you casually collect for a rainy day and there are those that feel like appendages that somebody ripped off your body that you have track down and sew back on or risk dying from infection.

I think the problem is that I remember my life through movies. I have no idea how I'd recall anything if movies didn't exist because they provide pretty much the only structure in my foggy head. Things were easier when I worked in a video store and I could look on the wall and see by numbers on stickers on plastic boxes where I had been… now everything is all jumbled up and out of order.

For many reasons BUTCHER, BAKER towers as a monumental marker through the mist behind me. It casts a deeper shadow than most because it had such an impact on me during my teen years. I came across the movie tie-in paperback years before I would encounter the movie itself and its content provided me with one of my earliest encounters with the subject of homosexuality (at least within a story that I could relate to rather than a horrifying news item or a pitying sitcom platitude). Its significance was boosted further by the fact that the novel was confiscated from me in junior high as if it were some kind of illegal contraband and my fear of its verboten themes being discovered were great. See, things were very different for a gay teen in 1982 and in so many subtle stabbing ways that it's impossible to fully convey. You know that part in INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS when the characters had to hide any and all emotions or traces of humanity to avoid being pounced upon by the screeching, pointing, empty hearted hive mob? I feel like that reflects my personal high school experience better than say, SIXTEEN CANDLES.

BUTCHER, BAKER doesn't exactly present the idea of being gay in a Pollyanna positive light but therein held its particular power for me because its crassness allowed me to better digest it. At that point in my existence the idea of being validated or approved of wasn't even on the table but the knowledge of not being alone in the universe left enough air out of my about-to-explode alienation balloon that it was the difference between life and death. There's a shitload of acrimony offered many discriminated against groups in the world but I think LGBT teens take on a singular burden of having to face those thrown stones alone…at least for a while. Sorry, that's kinda heavy but that's how important seeing myself at least partially reflected was. And really, that's how important movies and books are.

Anyway, BUTCHER stars JIMMY McNICHOL as Billy Lynch who is getting ready to go off to college and sparking abandonment drama from his twitchy guardian Aunt Cheryl (SUSAN TYRELL). Billy comes home from school one day to find his Aunt has killed a man (who she claims tried to rape her) but when the victim is discovered to be gay, a homophobic detective (BO SVENSON) becomes obsessed with pinning the murder on Billy. Now, a little while's back I was gabbing it up about another fine flick that features TYRELL called ANGEL (1984). ANGEL presents two all accepting counter culture fantasy parents in the characters of Solly (TYRELL) and Mae (DICK SHAWN.) In contrast, BUTCHER, BAKER offers a dark flip side and features two soul dousing monster parent figures. First we have Aunt Cheryl who is a controlling, jealous, trapped in the past, sexually inappropriate loon and symbolically subbing for Billy's dead father is SVENSON' s Det. Carlson who is a berating browbeater who elbows out Billy's one positive adult figure, his happens-to-be gay basketball coach Tom Landers (STEVE EASTIN who would fittingly go on to appear as a policeman in another gay-centric horror flick A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE).

I should clarify that there's nothing within the framework of BUTCHER to indicate that Billy is gay. Whether he is or he isn't doesn't change what he endures or how we understand him but I point it out because it deepens the detective's level of… instead of "homophobia" let's go with misguided witch burning hysteria and projected sexual insecurities. Like life though, BUTCHER is about much more than folks grappling with sexual orientation, it earns serious points from me for focusing on that critical moment that many of us must plow through when we shed the limiting, spirit-confining ideas we were raised with and begin to walk on shaky legs toward our own self-realization. Billy has to destroy his monstrous parental figures to move forward because they stand as the bars of his cage.

Due to its teen heroes (Billy's loyal and bunny-nose cute girlfriend Julia is played by a young JULIA DUFFY) and the year of its release, BUTCHER is often lumped in with the slasher clique but it has more in common with psycho-biddy grande dame Guignol flicks like WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? than its more popular body count contemporaries. Tonally I think it pairs up swell with the following year's excellent PSYCHO II or maybe even 1980's underrated THE ATTIC. In fact, BUTCHER could have saved itself a bunch of heartache by calling itself simply THE CELLAR as some of its more important revelations are made in just that locale. In any case, the streamlined alternate title NIGHT WARNING is of no help at all.

We're not offered any huge mystery to solve, the audience knows very well which chocolates in the box contain the nuts, the tension comes from wondering just how hard the shit is going to hit the fan and when. It's too bad director WILLIAM ASHER did not continue down the horror/ thriller path because he definitely brings something cyclonic and sweeping to the film's storm set climax. It's impressively uncanny compared to the rest of the movie and I can't help worrying that both Julia the character and JULIA the DUFFY are truly getting the tar beaten out of both of them right there on screen.

Let's be realistic, this movie is OWNED by TYRELL and I only wish I could type OWNED in neon and make it flash forever and with an accompanying siren sound. It's really one of the greatest performances in all of horror and frankly it's a disgrace that it's not more widely seen and appreciated. If NICHOLSON or WALKEN delivered this performance they'd be forever ducking from all the laurels chucked at them. From the DVD's (much appreciated) extras it doesn't appear TYRELL herself thought too much of the role but the truth is on the screen and, no matter how scampy she sometimes riffs it, there are clear-cut moments where she's delicately skating on the sharp thin line of true madness and it's a freaking glorious thing to behold.

In closing, this is a take it to the grave movie for me as you can probably tell. I'll be watching it when my hair is gray and my eyes have been removed to make way for tiny TV sets. Revisiting it once again I'm glad that times have changed and at the same time I don't know why they haven't changed more or even why they were so screwy in the first place. I'll never be grateful for the crap I personally had to endure but if it curbed me from becoming your standard douche-y bro dude it was very much worth it. Most of all it's fun to revisit through cinema a time in my life when I related more to buoyant Billy than I did to shattered Aunt Cheryl because great googly moogly, lord knows that's no longer the case. Ha ha. Just kidding (no, I'm not).