Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker

Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
Severin Films
1981
Starring Susan Tyrrell, Bo Svenson, Jimmy McNichol
Written by Stephen Breimer, Boon Collins
Photographed by Robbie Greenberg
Directed by William Asher

As the love-starved auntie with romantic designs on her teenage nephew, Susan Tyrrell delivers a primal scream performance that would send the local exorcist packing. It’s an act that begs to be ridiculed yet Tyrrell’s steel-plated bravado makes it immune to any rational criticism. She plays Cheryl Roberts, the green-eyed monster at the heart of William Asher’s aptly named Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker.

A porcelain beauty in her youth, middle age has transformed Cheryl into a militantly frumpy hausfrau devoted only to Billy, the orphaned son of her sister Anna. Years ago Anna and Billy’s father were killed while navigating a perilous mountain road when suddenly, inexplicably you might say, the brakes give out. Fourteen years later Billy, now played by Jimmy McNichol, continues to struggle under the ever-watchful eye of his domineering aunt, and he’s more than ready to leave the nest.

It won’t be easy, that nest has invisible bars; for these seventeen years, Billy has been smothered by his aunt’s attentions and she isn’t ready to surrender him. He’s not faring any better at school where the unassuming teen is bullied on the basketball court by his own teammates. Billy has a sometime girlfriend, a milk fed blonde played by Julia Duffy, and even she has her suspicions about Billy’s true nature. 

To delay her nephew’s escape, Cheryl has planned a special birthday party, and no girls allowed, thank you, it’s just Aunt Cheryl and Billy cutting the cake—”I’m your date for tonight” purrs the hungry dowager, and she’s not whistling Dixie. In order to keep Billy by her side she appeals to his protective instincts; she turns a routine visit from the TV repairman into an attempted rape scene staged for Billy’s benefit. When the horny handyman walks into Cheryl’s trap, she grabs a kitchen knife.

Billy arrives just as Cheryl goes in for the kill but the damage, and the TV repairman, is done. To the cops on the scene, it looks like Billy is responsible. It’s a bloody mess and it’s only going to get messier. If Cheryl seems increasingly unhinged, meet the police officer in charge of investigating this crime.

Bo Svenson plays Detective Joe Carlson, a stiff-backed Dragnet parody with a long-simmering obsession with gay folks. Carlson’s bizarre interrogation is full of hard-nosed cop jargon spiced up with sophomoric taunts and accusations—homophobic slurs that position Asher’s film firmly in its time; the anything goes Grindhouse era (only a very brave or extremely foolish filmmaker would use this language today). Detective Carlson has got plenty of issues and his outrageous demeanor challenges the increasingly demented Tyrrell to up her game. The two circle each other like coked-up sumo wrestlers while the audience waits for the inevitable showdown. 

Cheryl has many role models, Jocasta, the mother/wife of Oedipus, “Baby Jane” Hudson, the deluded woman-child, Blanch DuBois (“I don’t want realism. I want magic!”), and Norman Bates, who may have inspired Cheryl to store the bodies of her past victims in the fruit celler—no need to reveal the identity of the dear departed, but it’s the final Oedipal nail in the coffin. To disclose more probably wouldn’t be kosher but there’s no spoiling this film; its operatically gonzo finale gives the grindhouse gang more than their money’s worth.

Tyrrell began her acting career in off-Broadway productions and her renegade spirit caught the attention of kindred souls like John Huston, who cast her in Fat City, and Marco Ferreri who gave her a memorable role in his undervalued Bukowski adaptation, Tales of Ordinary Madness. Already a go for broke artist, Butcher, Baker seems to have unleashed a lifetime of hurt—in 1991 she wrote and performed her own one-woman show, Susan Tyrrell: My Rotten Life, a Bitter Operetta, praised by the Los Angeles Times as “loony” and “hallucinogenic.”

Tyrrell and William Asher, the director who went from I Love Lucy, Bewitched, and Beach Blanket Bingo to Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker are both gone now, leaving Jimmy McNichol to fill in the blanks which he does in Severin Films’s meticulous new Blu-ray release.

Along with a superb 4K transfer (the opening titles are so clean, they looks as if they were added digitally) there’s an abundance of extras including three separate audio commentaries, one from McNichol, one from screenwriters Steve Breimer and a third from co-producer Eugene Mazzola.

Also included is Extreme Prejudice, an interview with Bo Svenson, Point And Shoot featuring cinematographer Robbie Greenberg, and Family Dynamics, an interview with Editor Ted Nicolaou. The complete line-up of extras can be found at Severin’s site here.