Thanks for the memories!

Just perfect...

Expected more

Absolutely Brilliant!

I saw this amateurish effort until the title of THE BUTCHERS. It's a very cheap and low rent production about a couple of butchers who end up serving human meat thanks to their association with the local mob. Some thriller aspects of the story come into play when a young mute girl witnesses their nefarious activities and is destined to die, but things never go exactly as planned.In all fairness, THE BUTCHERS is rubbish. The film is about as exciting as its original title, MAXIE. Nothing much happens from beginning to end, and the only realism comes from numerous shots of real chickens having their heads chopped off, which isn't exactly pleasant to watch. The acting is resolutely poor although Talia Shire, who would of course go on to fame as Adrian in the ROCKY franchise, is pretty good in a rather minor role. In the end, though, THE BUTCHERS has more in common with an Andy Milligan film than anything approaching real cinema; i.e., it's complete rubbish.

This has been called a horror film of sorts. It won't scare you, but it might just bore you to death because for the first hour plus it contains pitiful little action. There appears too to have been a half-hearted attempt to infuse some comedy into it. That fails dismally, assuming it was the case.A man and his imbecile apprentice - apparently a waif he has more or less adopted - run a butcher's shop where on occasion they dispose of bodies from some unspecified criminal entity or organisation. A young deaf mute girl sees, or junior thinks she sees, a body being delivered, and when an idealistic doctor, a newbie in town, decides to teach the girl to communicate, junior decides she must die. This is a kid who can't kill a chicken without trashing the shop, so how can he dispose of a feisty tomboy, even if she can't scream the place down? After kidnapping her, he decides instead to try to appeal to her better nature, assuming a person's better nature includes keeping mum about feeding corpses to the neighbourhood. Obviously this is not going to end well for the local murder inc; if you want to watch the finale, fast forward, you won't miss anything.

I have this title under Murderer's Keep on VHS and The Butchers on DVD. I actually enjoy this flick very much. The scenes and camera angles are well thought out and interesting. The acting is above average and although the horror is subdued a bit and the film creeps along some, it has a certain charm that elevates it a bit. I can tell by the lack of reviews this flick gets ignored. It's a shame really, because it's a very well done affair and worth a watch, you could do much worse (and probably have) Vic Tayback, better known as that gruff, greasy diner cook with a heart of gold on TV's Alice plays Smedke, a gruff, greasy butcher with an accent of gold in a flick that deals with a butchers desire to pass cost savings onto his customers by cutting the middle man(Sometime dressed in a Santa suit) into little pieces and charging $1.15 a pound (What a deal!) His apprentice, a simpleton with gray teeth is learning the trade. All is going well except that cute little deaf mute Maxie might have seen something she shouldn't but ol Smedke isn't too worried about it since the girl can't talk. The beautiful Talia Shire (Yo Adrian!!) shows up sans Rocky and along with her doctor pal decide to teach Maxieto talk since her crappy dad won't. Vic gets nervous at this prospect for obvious reasons. Mayhem ensues.

*SPOILERS* When I see the names Talia Shire or Vic Taybeck, I usually assume that the production they are associated with will have a certain quality to it, even if it is made for television. When I saw these names together in one movie, I was expecting one hell of a film. That's the first mistake many of us make when we go to a movie. Often not only does expectation diminish the quality of the production, it diminishes the films original intention. Having said this, I will say that I tried very hard to watch `The Butcher' (or Maxie, or Murderers Keep, take your pick) from a critical standpoint, and in my book that means no expectations, and brutal honesty. First off, The direction was poor, some of the footage was light struck, and the editing was sometimes unforgivable and always choppy. However the script was mostly believable, and even entertaining for an undemanding audience, the acting, though only mediocre, was at least tolerable, and the characters seemed well drawn. The premise of `The Butcher' is quite simple. A young mute girl discovers that the local butcher is using human meat in his market. Vic Taybeck is menacing (though not as much as he should have been) as Smedke the butcher, and Talia Shire is as mousy as ever playing a concerned social worker. `The Butcher' was by no means an awful movie, however with these kind of actors, and a script that wasn't all bad, it should have been much better.