The Love Butcher

Erik Stern earns himself a place in the annals of cult cinema with his deliciously demented performances in this somewhat obscure mid-70s exploitation-horror film. He plays Caleb, physically impaired gardener-for-hire who is dominated by his "brother" Lester, a smooth ladies man. Lester is also a lady killer, and detectives are stumped as to figuring out who is behind the murders. Annoying, schmucky reporter Russell (Jeremiah Beecher), who's somehow scored himself a hot girlfriend, Flo (Kay Neer), gives the detectives a hard time while doing some investigating of his own.

Essentially, Sterns' performances ARE the movie, which is, for the most part, not that distinguished. There's the requisite gore and titillation, but not that much of it. Directors Don Jones and Mikel Angel do get some credit for their canny choice of soundtrack music. There are some familiar exploitation genre faces among the cast, such as Richard Kennedy ("Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS") as a cop and John Parker ("Schoolgirls in Chains") as a minister. Lovely Robin Sherwood ("Tourist Trap", "Death Wish II") is set up as one of a number of potential victims.

Stern, who went on to do a fair amount of TV work, is a fun guy to watch do his thing, especially when he's trying to adopt different ethnic identities. Kennedy is good, and the ladies are all quite attractive. At approximately 85 minutes long, "The Love Butcher" doesn't overstay its welcome, and offers ample entertainment for drive-in movie lovers who want something they don't want to take all that seriously.

Eight out of 10.

Stephen Thrower's bible of American exploitation highlights – entitled "Nightmare USA" – is rapidly becoming the most expensive spending I ever made! Not just the book itself is quite costly, but the way he extendedly glorifies certain obscure and incredibly rare movies simply make you crave to own them yourself and you unwarily start browsing the Internet for copies. But hey, so far all purchases were worth every single penny I spent on them and Thrower's reviews – albeit sometimes a little over-enthusiast – are always 100% reliable if you too are into demented and raunchy 70's cinema as well. "The Love Butcher" sounded like one of those titles I simply couldn't afford to miss and indeed it certainly didn't disappoint. This is a wondrous example of cheap, sleazy, grainy and tasteless exploitation madness, with a simplistic but effective plot and a handful of shockingly misogynistic scenes of violence. The creators looked for inspiration in Alfred Hitchcock's notorious horror film "Psycho" (like many aspiring horror directors did around that time) and unscrupulously imitated the concept of a schizophrenic killer. However, this film doesn't keep it a secret until the end. The crippled Caleb works as a gardener in a fancy neighborhood where a lot of pretentious and bored housewives spend their days twirling around in sexy outfits. Caleb is a quite pathetic figure with a shiny bald head, exaggeratedly thick glasses and a malformed hand, so he's usually the target of mockery for his obnoxious female customers. But when Caleb returns home, he talks to his brother Lester – a black foam mannequin wearing a blond wig – and then suddenly becomes him. Self-confident Lester is, and I quote, "the great male Adonis of the universe" and he pays a charming visit to each woman that mistreated his "brother". The result of these visits is a disturbing murder spree that baffles the local police, even though the victims all live on the same block and have the same gardener. I wonder how they could overlook that pattern…

As far as I'm concerned, "The Love Butcher" is vintage and delightfully prototypic exploitation stuff. The atmosphere is thoroughly unpleasant, the male characters are despicable yokels (ending every sentence with "yes, ma'ammmm) and the overall tone of the film is extremely women-unfriendly to say the least. The murder sequences aren't as repulsive as I expected (or hoped) but there nevertheless are a couple of highly memorable bits of nastiness, like the creative use of various gardening tools and a brutal butchering in an outdoor swimming pool. Besides, the slight and already forgivable lack of bloody carnage is widely compensated by the awesome and over-the-top demented use of dialog! The conversations between Caleb and his alter ego Lester, and particularly the latter's monologues, and indescribably entertaining to listen to and they even single-handedly uplift "The Love Butcher" to the level op pitch black comedy. The supposedly heart-breaking flashback near the end, clarifying what tragic event overcame Caleb and Lester at young age, is literally the cherry on an already delicious cheesecake. It has to be said the film owes a lot of its powerful impact to the performance of Erik Stern as the schizophrenic. Stern is stupendous and maintains the exact right balance between comical and disturbing during the numerous sequences where he just talks against a foam mannequin or empty gardening outfit. The male supportive cast is pretty forgettable, but the female victims give good performances, most notable Eve Mac (as a lewd Texan co-ed), Robin Sherwood (as the cocky rebellious chick) and Kay Neer (as the cherubic good-hearted woman you really wish she survives the ordeal).

It was the early nineties and me and my 2 stoner flatmates loved hiring dodgy horror movie at the local video shop. From time to time i would pick up this whilst trying to choose a rental in the store, and sing the title to the tune of "The Love Boat" to my whacked mates - I'd usually get a laugh. One day i showed up at home with this under my arm. We blew a joint and watched in awe/horror/hysterics. The 3 of us all found the last scene quite disturbing. So much so that whilst the the credits rolled, one of my flatmates stood up from his chair, walk to the video player, ejected the tape, placed it under an upturned milk crate in the middle of the living room, and left.

This movie is gold.

I've seen this movie many times, and I still like to watch it. This movie is beyond bad. I love it.

The plot is a sad mutation of a very very popular thriller. The acting is so bad at times The "action" in this movie is awesome. The "Love Butcher" kills all of his victims (all female, of course) with garden implements. Accomplishing this modus operandi could take quite a bit of doing, particularly if the urge to murder comes while indoors. This is not a problem for our killer, though. In his world, people keep hoes and rakes near the fireplace.

There are some great lines, atrocious dub-ins, and druken edits. Add to this a deliciously lame disco-era feel, and you've got a winner.

If you're a connesieur of bad films, you have to see this one.

My review was written in October 1982 after a screening on Manhattan's 42nd St.

"The Love Butcher" is a case history psycho-horror thriller, in the genre of "Psycho", "The Sniper", etc. Filmed in 1975 (or perhaps even earlier) the new release is a B-feature supporting the comedy "Goin' All the Way", and sharing some of that pic's tech personnel. It has some gore and cruelty for the hardcore fans of the genre, but is largely of interest as a curio only.

The fascinating thing about "Love Butcher" is that while it precedes the recent trend of violent "flasher" pictures, its script is almost a manifesto declaring the misogyny of the genre. Played tongue-in-cheek and overwritten for comic effect, pic's lead character, a split personality of "brothers" Caleb and Lester (Erik Stern) not only kills women but first hands them a tirade about how they emasculate men and deserve to die. This heavy emphasis makes the film virtually required viewing for students working on master's theses concerning horror, as well as those trendy crusaders against the genre's excesses: Harlan Ellison and Chicago's Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel.

Simple-minded plot has Caleb as a crippled gardener who kills his femme employers (on an L. A. block) with various gardening utensils. Pic's ad copy trumpets: "see grotesque underwater tortures" and in fact the most bizarre killing has him offing a woman by forcing an active garden hose down her throat while she's underwater in her swimming pool. This exaggeration for effect is fairly typical.

What makes this cheapie funny is its combination of "artsy" technique (flashy slow-motion inserts and ludicrous cross-cutting) with goofy dialog. Midway through the pic, the dim-witted police Captain Stark (Edward Roehm) declares of the series of murders: "whoever did this is weird, not just sick, but a real weirdo". This opens the floodgate, and the rest of the cast takes to peppering their dialog with "weird" in the way the term "awesome" is bandied about today.

For a film that credits two of everything (directors, cameramen, etc.), "Love Butcher" is well-made and has a different look for a low budgeter by virtue of its anamorphic Techniscope lensing. Stern has an actor's field day, hamming it up with a variety of wigs as the two halves of the central character, but he still comes off as a pale shadow of Rod Steiger's definitive version in "No Way to Treat a Lady". The rest of the actors are poor.