Writing about Movies, TV, Comics & Toys. Critically and creatively.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Movie #6 The Butcher and Movie #7 Dolls

The Butcher is as close to watching a snuff film as you can get. It's a "found footage" type of movie (ala Cloverfield, [REC], Paranormal Activity) and I would describe it as a mix between The Poughkeepsie Tapes and Hostel.

The movie takes the creation of a snuff film and shows it to you both through the eyes of its creators with their camera but also the eyes of the victims, as they all have cameras strapped to their heads.

I'm going to go ahead and tell you it's a very gory movie, and a lot of the dialogue doesn't make much sense (perhaps I had bad subtitles). The first 30 minutes of this movie is very boring, because you spend most of it in the position of one of the victims waiting for their turn to get killed on camera, and it's essentially a camera pointed at a closed door on the other side of the barn they're in where lots of screaming and chainsaw noises are coming from. Then they bring this person in for their 15 seconds of fame.

The movie takes a turn here that you wouldn't expect people who have experience in snuff films to do, so it is a little unrealistic in my opinion. But you do get to see quite a bit of torture in the first person view point, but the dynamic between "the director"  and "the butcher" is much like that of the clan in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so it gets tiresome to hear someone shouting and someone grunting constantly. The last section of the movie is much better than the first, it utilizes the first person view point very well, and things start to happen that you don't expect.

I would recommend this to you if you're a fan of this style of film making, if you want to see a good gory movie, or if the idea of a snuff film creeps you out (because this will definitely work).


Directed by a genre veteran Stuart Gordon, this movie (like a lot from the last portion of the era) is VERY 1980s, but boy is it a fun ride.

As you can guess, the movie is about killer dolls, but it actually has a moral to it (unlike the other kill doll movies i've seen). A family gets stranded in the middle of an English moor and look for shelter, they find it at the home of a friendly old doll maker and his wife. Another man with two hitchikers he has picked up show up soon after them, and from there weird things with dolls start happening.

The movie is pretty creepy, but very very silly too. Dolls eyes and heads will be in different positions than they were in previous frames, and it really works in the creepy department. The make up and gore effects are pretty good, considering it seems the deaths were thought of while shooting. A very good idea for a horror movie is shot down by it's poorly written dialogue, and total over the top performances. But in my opinion this is what makes it so enjoyable, not only do you get to see dolls killing people but you get to laugh every time a real person is trying to "act" on screen. My other favorite part is the the three times I noticed the strings/stick/hands of the puppeteer for the evil dolls.

Sure there are a lot of things wrong with it, the script and writing in particular, but its a great bad movie to watch, and fans of really 80s/over the top horror will not be disappointed. Also the moral of this movie? You're never too old for toys, because if you are they just might get up and kill you.

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