In the 1980s, it was too easy for a film like Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker to get lost in the horror shuffle. Icons like Freddy and Jason were coming into the world and franchise fever was catching. A “video nasty” label also did little to help this hidden gem find an audience overseas in the U.K. Yet after years of being trapped on VHS under the name of Night Warning, this film finally surfaced on both DVD and Blu-ray and, for a short time, the streaming service Shudder. Cult followers relived what might have felt like a fever dream back in the day, and new fans have since latched on to the film’s sensational excesses.
Since he was three years old, Billy Lynch (played by Jimmy McNichol) has only known one mother: Aunt Cheryl (Susan Tyrrell). He has been in her care ever since his parents were killed in a bizarre and gruesome car wreck. After his folks are snuffed out early on — the film’s original director, Michael Miller, delivered the grisly opener before being replaced by William Asher — Billy eventually forgets about them and grows into a seemingly well-adjusted teenager. Sure, his and Aunt Cheryl’s relationship is deemed a bit unnatural by outsiders, but so far it is nothing too alarming. Everything only starts to change when Billy talks about leaving home.
A mother’s love can be detrimental if not outright dangerous in the horror genre. The original Friday the 13th delivered a prime example of the “killer mommy” character; Pamela Voorhees’ maternal instinct caused her to harm anyone she blamed for her son’s accidental death. Shortly after that iconic massacre rose another malevolent matriarch whose crimes had everything to do with her child. Tyrrell’s character is considered an aunt in Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker, but her smothering is no less sinister or destructive.
Aunt Cheryl’s insidious transformation coincides with Billy’s maturation. His interest in girls, particularly high school sweetheart Julia (Julia Duffy), and his plans for college both trigger Cheryl. She accommodates Billy’s academic ambition after expressing dismay, however, this is not a compromise so much as it is a part of her master plan. Not long after getting the supposed thumbs-up to fly the nest, McNichol’s unaware character comes home on his seventeenth birthday to find his blood-spattered aunt holding a knife and standing over a dead man’s body.
Ahead of Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker’s very limited screening in theaters, Pocket Books issued a tie-in novelization. This adaptation of the screenplay, written by Joseph Brugo and Richard Natale, more or less tells the same story as the film, albeit with some significant differences here and there. For starters, the inciting murder is something more of a mystery in the book. The film hides nothing as Cheryl aggressively comes on to the TV repairman, Phil Brody (William Caskey Swaim), then stabs him repeatedly with a knife after he rebuffs her advances. However, the details surrounding Brody’s death are uncertain in the novelization until Billy learns the horrible truth about his dear Aunt Cheryl.
Keeping Billy close to home is Cheryl’s utmost priority, yet she still enacts a backup plan. Hence Tyrrell’s character getting dolled up for Brody’s ill-fated house call. If her pride and joy for the last ten-plus years is so determined to leave her, then Cheryl needs to find someone else to nurture and look after. Could Aunt Cheryl have been hoping to make Brody a father and herself a mother (again)? Or was it always her intention to kill someone in hopes that the legal and social consequences would ensnare Billy, forcing him to stay home with his aunt? Either way, Cheryl views the repairman’s death as a happy accident; creating chaos was her way of restoring normalcy.
Billy believes his aunt when she claims Brody attempted to rape her, but the police are less convinced. Especially Detective Joe Carlson (Bo Svenson), a man of many prejudices. Svenson’s portrayal as the bigoted cop is as alarming as it is convincing. Carlson gets it into his head that not only is Cheryl covering for Billy, the murder was the result of a gay tiff. Learning that Brody and Billy’s basketball coach, Tom Landers (Steven Eastin), were romantically involved only makes Carlson stick to his outlandish theory despite there being no evidence of Billy’s involvement with either man. The lawman is only going off a mistaken hunch and responding to his provoked homophobia. Now, the novelization does not make Carlson any less of a homophobe, but it does show where his irrationality and anger both stem from.
One of the biggest differences between the novelization and the film lies within Tom Landers, who is now Billy’s English teacher rather than his basketball coach. The coach in the book is a tertiary character named Nelson, and he has no significant bearing on the overall story. The change is jarring at first, but other than the different occupation, the literary version of Tom Landers is, more or less, the same sympathetic man whose partner was suddenly taken away from him. With this being a novel, Tom is granted more game time; readers get to know him better as he deals with his grief and plans a new future now that he has been outed. Although his screen counterpart does not have the same degree of character development, Eastin’s depiction is unusually progressive for ’80s horror. The film’s Landers is masculine as well as sensitive, not a degenerate, and he survives to the end.
While often lumped in with the decade’s slashers, Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker fits in far better with the “grand dame guignol” (or “hagsploitation”) films of yesteryear. Older women who are put upon or seen as past their prime — by society and/or themselves — transform into “psycho-biddies.” Resentment and an overwhelming sense of faded glamor are among the key factors fueling their eventual rampages. The blueprint for this entire subgenre, 1962’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, is a substantial inspiration for Stephen Breimer, Boon Collins and Alan Jay Glueckman’s story. Cheryl herself is too young to be deemed a psycho-biddy; Tyrrell was only in her mid-thirties when Butcher was first released. Nevertheless, the DNA of the archetype courses through Aunt Cheryl’s veins as she kills anyone who denies her a chance at motherhood.
Character actor Susan Tyrrell plunged into the role of Cheryl Roberts, making it her own and blessing Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker with a show-stealing performance. Tyrrell is indeed the big draw here, but the rest of this horror gem is surprisingly well-crafted, ripe for analysis, and should not go overlooked.
Horror contemplates in great detail how young people handle inordinate situations and all of life’s unexpected challenges. While the genre forces characters of every age to face their fears, it is especially interested in how youths might fare in life-or-death scenarios.
The column Young Blood is dedicated to horror stories for and about teenagers, as well as other young folks on the brink of terror.
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