Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker1981
“She was lonely. He was all she had. No one would take him from her…and live.”
Directed by William Asher
On the charts
🏆 1 win & 1 nomination
The premise
Rejected by her lover, the only man left in Cheryl's life is the orphaned nephew she has raised as her own son. She'll stop at nothing to keep Billy with her. When her plans misfire, she is swept up into an insane frenzy that means death to anyone who comes between her and her obsession. But the investigating detective is convinced that Billy is the real killer - and determined to prove it. Madness and fanaticism work together to drag all concerned into a terrifying vortex of blood-letting that adds a nightmarish twist to the classic Oedipus story.
Horror Vault's take
A young man raised by his devoted aunt begins to sense that her love for him has curdled into something dangerously possessive — and when violence erupts in their home, the walls close in fast. A bigoted detective zeroes in on Billy as the prime suspect, blind to the far more volatile threat hiding in plain sight. What unfolds is a psycho-sexual pressure cooker that draws freely from Oedipal myth, lacing its slasher mechanics with genuine psychological dread. Susan Tyrrell's volcanic performance is the unhinged heart of this underseen early-eighties cult curio.
Content: Graphic Violence, Homophobia, Incestuous Themes, Sexual Content, Depictions Of Mental Illness, Disturbing Domestic Abuse
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