The Love Butcher

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).

This is a very funny ,albeit gruesome, slasher movie. While the characters seem to be taking themselves very seriously, the audience has little choice but to chuckle with every over the top scene. It's gotta be satire don't you think? I guess the only saving grace is that there don't seem to be any copies readily available. In any case, a humorously morbid little diversion.

The Love Butcher - 1975 (This Film Rates a C+ ) The public is upset because there have been six murders and no suspects. There is a lot of anger, yelling and shouting. From there we meet, Caleb who is an odd "crippled gimp" gardener for the snobby. He goes home to an already deceased brother (Lester) who torments and belittles him in a delusional like state. Or is this reality? Seems like Lester is the stud and Caleb is the dud when it comes to women. Lester just can't help but kill them though. Caleb slowly delves into madness and the lines are blurred until the twist ending. It isn't awful. The women in this film are portrayed as dumb and stereotypical as are the police officers. The kills aren't gory but there is some intensity behind the actions. Plus, the drowning by having a garden hose shoved down your throat was fun. The music is pretty bad, the acting is juvenile, and the script is lacking. There are some moments that were meant to be funny that really aren't, for instance, challenging a killer by stating "I can outperform you 10 days in a week". But there is sex and boobs.

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.

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.