Entry 82: Slaughterhouse (1987)

Slaughterhouse (1987)

Dir: Rick Roessler

"Buddy has an axe to grind.  A big axe."

 

When a movie's opening credits are set to footage of real pigs being slaughtered over a goofy, "Wackety Sax"-style intrumental, you know there's only one place you can be!  So c'mon, y'all; toss on your best overalls, wipe the pig offal off the couch and get cozy down here in the basement of sleaze...We're about to spend a little time in the Slaughterhouse!

This Texas Chain Saw imitator begins with a group of obnoxious teens fucking around at a run-down rural farm.  When one horny couple intentional antagonizes a pen of swine, they're bumped off by an enormous, bearded, overall-clad redneck with a comically large meat clever (I mean it; it's fucking HUGE!).  We then meet teenage sweethearts Skip (the vaguely Rob Lowe-ian Erich Schwarz) and his girlfriend Liz (real-life stunt woman Sherry Leigh, Sid and Nancy, TV's 24, whose very unattractive long perm and masculine jawline make her less an object of desire and more a dead ringer for "Weird" Al Yankovic), hard-working but beleaguered Sheriff Borden (get it?) and local bigwigs Tom (Bill Brinsfield, Death House, the Chuck Norris masterpiece Top Dog) and Herb.  Tom and Herb want to purchase the foreclosed local slaughterhouse run by Lester Bacon (Don Barrett, Hobgoblins) to turn into a citrus farm, but the proud meat man refuses to sell to these soft-handed pansies.  We're also introduced to Bacon's son, Buddy (who is, in fact, the killer from the beginning); a hulking man-child who sleeps in a pigpen and can communicate only through grunts and squeals.  In true Texas Chain Saw fashion, the Bacon farm is decorated with decomposing carcasses and sculptures crafted from animal bones, and it's revealed that Buddy has hung his earlier victims up in the slaughterhouse with meat hooks.  Facing bankruptcy and refusing to sell out, Lester decides to sick Buddy on Sheriff Borden (arm messily lopped off), Herb (Buddy crushes his skull with his bare hands in the movie's coolest/ickiest kill scene) and Tom (stuffed alive into a meat grinder in a disappointingly non-explicit scene).  After these grisly killings, we get an interlude in which Skip and Liz make out...GAH!  Fuck me, this is more upsetting than ANY of the death scenes in the film...imagine Rob Lowe making out with "Weird" Al dressed in drag...Yeah; you're welcome.  Of course, these two love birds end up trapped in the slaughterhouse...Will they make it out?  Or will Billy turn them into choice cuts? 

Slaughterhouse is never anything more or less than a competent homage to/parody of Tobe Hooper's rural cannibal classic, but loses points because Hooper himself did it better a year earlier in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 ("It's like death eatin' a cracker, ain't it?").  Still, it's surprisingly well made, seeing as it's the sole effort from writer/director Roessler.  Considering it's genre, it comes off as perhaps a little too slick (horror films are unique in that a low budget/shitty film stock often contributes to their overall effectiveness/atmosphere), and it's overt, slapsticky attempts at humor diffuse any genuine tension/horror from the situations it presents.  Having said that, Buddy's certainly a memorable character and it's a welcome addition to a sub-genre too crowded by Chainsaw and Hills Have Eyes sequels/remakes/reboots.