Butcher Baker, Nightmare Maker (1980)

An early-’80s low-budget shocker that has rather fallen by the wayside over the years, Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker remains one of the more neglected horror films of its era. It earned a certain notoriety after being placed on the British “Video Nasties” blacklist, ensuring its ban in the UK and giving it a reputation far greater than its modest budget might otherwise have warranted.

Curiously, despite the passage of time, the film still languishes in relative obscurity. The BBFC has long since indicated that it would be prepared to grant the film a certificate if submitted, yet the company that once held the UK rights went out of business before seeking reclassification. The result is that the film has remained largely unavailable in Britain. Matters have hardly been better in the United States, where it too has spent years without a proper official home-video release something that has finally been rectifed.  Better late then never.

What makes Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker refreshing is that it arrived during the height of the masked-slasher explosion but wisely chose a rather different path. Instead of simply copying Halloween and Friday the 13th, it feels closer in spirit to psychological thrillers such as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte and Die! Die! My Darling!, with only occasional bursts of graphic violence.

The story centres on the deeply unhealthy relationship between a young man and the aunt who raises him after his parents die in what appears to be a suspicious car accident caused by brake failure. Aunt Cheryl devotes herself entirely to her orphaned nephew, but her affection gradually reveals itself to be something far darker and considerably more disturbing.

The situation begins to unravel when Cheryl makes an advance towards a local handyman, only to react with violent fury after he rejects her. She promptly accuses him of rape, though the police are understandably sceptical. Matters become considerably more complicated when the unfortunate handyman turns up dead and suspicion falls not upon Cheryl but upon her nephew Billy (Jimmy McNichol), whom one detective rather bizarrely assumes was secretly involved with the victim.

As the investigation progresses, Cheryl’s obsessive need to dominate every aspect of Billy’s life becomes increasingly unhinged, and long-buried family secrets gradually emerge before the film builds towards its grisly climax.

The picture remains noteworthy for several reasons. Its central relationship contains unmistakable incestuous overtones, subject matter that was still highly provocative in 1981 and may well have contributed to the film’s inclusion on the Video Nasties list. It also contains attitudes towards homosexuality that today seem astonishingly dated and, in places, openly homophobic. Even allowing for changing social attitudes, however, it is difficult to understand why the authorities considered the film dangerous enough to ban outright.

Viewed today, Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker proves considerably more interesting than the average slasher churned out during the early 1980s. Much of its success rests squarely upon Susan Tyrrell’s extraordinary performance as the increasingly deranged Aunt Cheryl. She dominates virtually every scene she appears in, creating one of horror cinema’s more memorable psychopaths and lifting the entire production well above its modest origins.

One final thought: whatever became of Jimmy and Kristy McNichol? For a time they seemed destined to become major stars, yet both largely disappeared from the spotlight just as adulthood beckoned.