Best movie of this year hands down!

Better Late Then Never

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This has been called a horror film of sorts. It won't scare you, but it might just bore you to death because for the first hour plus it contains pitiful little action. There appears too to have been a half-hearted attempt to infuse some comedy into it. That fails dismally, assuming it was the case.A man and his imbecile apprentice - apparently a waif he has more or less adopted - run a butcher's shop where on occasion they dispose of bodies from some unspecified criminal entity or organisation. A young deaf mute girl sees, or junior thinks she sees, a body being delivered, and when an idealistic doctor, a newbie in town, decides to teach the girl to communicate, junior decides she must die. This is a kid who can't kill a chicken without trashing the shop, so how can he dispose of a feisty tomboy, even if she can't scream the place down? After kidnapping her, he decides instead to try to appeal to her better nature, assuming a person's better nature includes keeping mum about feeding corpses to the neighbourhood. Obviously this is not going to end well for the local murder inc; if you want to watch the finale, fast forward, you won't miss anything.

I have this title under Murderer's Keep on VHS and The Butchers on DVD. I actually enjoy this flick very much. The scenes and camera angles are well thought out and interesting. The acting is above average and although the horror is subdued a bit and the film creeps along some, it has a certain charm that elevates it a bit. I can tell by the lack of reviews this flick gets ignored. It's a shame really, because it's a very well done affair and worth a watch, you could do much worse (and probably have) Vic Tayback, better known as that gruff, greasy diner cook with a heart of gold on TV's Alice plays Smedke, a gruff, greasy butcher with an accent of gold in a flick that deals with a butchers desire to pass cost savings onto his customers by cutting the middle man(Sometime dressed in a Santa suit) into little pieces and charging $1.15 a pound (What a deal!) His apprentice, a simpleton with gray teeth is learning the trade. All is going well except that cute little deaf mute Maxie might have seen something she shouldn't but ol Smedke isn't too worried about it since the girl can't talk. The beautiful Talia Shire (Yo Adrian!!) shows up sans Rocky and along with her doctor pal decide to teach Maxieto talk since her crappy dad won't. Vic gets nervous at this prospect for obvious reasons. Mayhem ensues.

IMDb currently has this movie under the title "Murderer's Keep", with a TV release date of 1988. I suppose it's possible it got its first wide release on TV in 1988 (though it doesn't really seem like anything anyone would have bothered to broadcast), but I suspect it could date back to the early 1970s or maybe even the late 1960s! It's hard to understand how the title "Murderer's Keep" relates to the movie at all; I wonder if that title belongs to something else. "Maxie" and "The Butcher" are both logical titles.Post production was by American Zoetrope films, and some of the people involved with it have credits for other AZ films. A lot of the people don't seem to have been involved with much, if anything, else.I watched it on the DVD Troma recently released, giving it a new title of "The Butchers." They goof on the video box, claiming Talia Shire played Maxie. In fact, Talia Shire played a small role as a social worker named Sandy, and Maxie was played by the equally plain (at least here) KT Baumann. She doesn't appear to have any other film credits, at least under that name. The Internet Broadway Database lists a stage actress active in the 1960s and 1970s named KT Baumann AKA Kathryn Baumann, so she could be the actress listed on the IMDb as Kathrine Baumann.Maxie is a young deaf mute girl who dresses like a tomboy and delivers newspapers. Her father is overprotective of her, not letting her go to school, afraid she'll be picked on there. He thinks he's doing the right thing, but he clearly isn't. Many people, including his boss, did not realize he had a daughter until a psychiatric medical consultant and a social worker move into town and try to help her. He's equally closemouthed about what happened to his wife.A butcher, perhaps of eastern European descent, has had a shop in town for many years. He has an assistant, who is an orphaned, stuttering young man with emotional and behavioral problems. They periodically receive bodies of people, which they dispose of; whether they actually sell human meat, or just dispose of the bodies under the cover of the butcher shop, I'm not sure. They think that Maxie saw that they receive bodies, but I think they were mistaken. At first they're not concerned, because Maxie is mute, but when they hear the doctor thinks he might be able to teach Maxie to talk, they become alarmed.Kind of an oddball movie. There is some blood in it, and there are periodic shots of meat grinders, and clucking chickens. Some chickens appear to actually get their heads chopped off. It seemed like there might have been some footage missing after a car crash, since one of the passengers winds up outside the car with someone else without explanation, or maybe it was just some bad storytelling/editing.

*SPOILERS* When I see the names Talia Shire or Vic Taybeck, I usually assume that the production they are associated with will have a certain quality to it, even if it is made for television. When I saw these names together in one movie, I was expecting one hell of a film. That's the first mistake many of us make when we go to a movie. Often not only does expectation diminish the quality of the production, it diminishes the films original intention. Having said this, I will say that I tried very hard to watch `The Butcher' (or Maxie, or Murderers Keep, take your pick) from a critical standpoint, and in my book that means no expectations, and brutal honesty. First off, The direction was poor, some of the footage was light struck, and the editing was sometimes unforgivable and always choppy. However the script was mostly believable, and even entertaining for an undemanding audience, the acting, though only mediocre, was at least tolerable, and the characters seemed well drawn. The premise of `The Butcher' is quite simple. A young mute girl discovers that the local butcher is using human meat in his market. Vic Taybeck is menacing (though not as much as he should have been) as Smedke the butcher, and Talia Shire is as mousy as ever playing a concerned social worker. `The Butcher' was by no means an awful movie, however with these kind of actors, and a script that wasn't all bad, it should have been much better.