ETPC

tonight's movie was Slaughterhouse (1987)! and it was....ok! i've seen much worse horror movies and Slaughterhouse had enough going on to hold my attention and was clearly made with at least some understanding of the craft of filmmaking. like other movies of it's ilk, it's clearly straining against it's very low budget ($110k!) but it still manages to have some decent atmosphere and good kills. the music and sound design is also shockingly good, with the audio work in the third act being honestly a little unnerving! but the movie dies the minute anyone talks. the acting in this is......pretty fucking bad, to be honest. the best acting is from Joe B. Barton as Buddy Bacon who is clearly having a ton of fun as the massive killer who communicates entirely in pig noises. the sequence where he steals a cop car is a real treat, with him screaming squeals into the radio to the confusion of dispatch. Don Barrett as Lester Bacon is also a lot of fun but comes dangerously close to eating too much of the scenery and cracking too many jokes, though his story is kind of interesting. everyone else? ....well, the main two women scream really well? it's pretty dire. Deputy Dave Thomas (Jeff Wright) is played as if the pre-pubescent teen from the Simpsons was on the verge of crying all the time, and it's very hard to tell if it's intentional or not. everyone else is either totally forgettable or god awful. again though, $110k. the setup is that Lester Bacon is the owner of the local abandoned slaughterhouse and is in the process of being evicted from his home unless he sells it and the slaughterhouse for $55k to a former partner. Lester and his son Buddy are bitter about the modern state of mechanized slaughterhouses and lament the 'good ol days' of slaughterhouses. in a fit of rage, Buddy begins to go on a killing spree of anyone who sets foot on the land, to the encouragement of Lester who specifically asks Buddy to target his old partner, his lawyer and the town's sheriff. it's a pretty simple setup, but it's pretty decent material for jokes about pigs and meat and so on. honestly, the movie isn't great but it's decent trash. if you need to watch a horror b-movie from the 80's and you've exhausted all other options, you can do a lot worse then Slaughterhouse. though uhhh heavy cw for actual footage of slaughterhouses in the opening! and some pet violence!