I bought this along with 400 other DVD's when one of our local video retail outlets liquidated and this film is better than the vast majority of that group."The Butcher" (2006) is basically a cut-rate combo of "Wrong Turn" (2003) and "Monster Man" (2003). Oddly, I liked this better than either of those films. Perhaps I tapped into the self-reflexive subtext. My reaction would be more negative if it had been a bigger production, but I tend to give a lot of points for quality production design on a limited budget and every bit of their budget makes it onto the screen.It looks like they shot the film at Camp Roberts, home of the California Army National Guard. Which would account for the use of the deuce and a half (M35) army truck to parody the action on "Duel" and "Monster Man".Don't seek this one out if you are expecting something original in the old familial horror genre (insert: "The American family as demented in-breds who lure victims to a home they have turned into a slaughterhouse" here). And don't expect a lot of well-staged action adventure segments or high-end special effects. And be prepared for another of those tired indestructible villain twists at the end.Like "Wrong Turn" they make the clueless mistake of killing off their hottest actress first, although at least here they wait until she has taken off her top.Fortunately Catherine Wreford's tight abs get plenty of screen time for the remainder of the film, so there is still something nice to look at for those who like that sort of thing. Wreford's "Rachel" is a pretty good plucky heroine (certainly better than Eliza Dushku's "Jessie") and handles the scream queen duties quite well. Annie Mackay (who looks a lot like Kristen Stewart) gives an excellent nonverbal performance.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Just when you were convinced that (1): plagiarism is illegal, and (2): Lions Gate means quality; here is this steaming pile of cinema in which, if you were convinced anything, it's that even you can write a bad, unimaginative movie and convince a moron or two to capture it on celluloid. Just like bands that copy each other's riffs, this "movie" more than borrows, but hijacks elements from said titles. What we have here is your six attractive twentysomethings...on their way to...Vegas.Why are young people in horror movies always going to Vegas? Never anywhere else, it's always Vegas. Are they all gonna get together and make one collective bad movie or something? But I digress.Any horror movies with pretty people going to Vegas (or anywhere, for that matter) always begins with car trouble. Here, it's the telltale flat tire. If people in horror movies took care of their vehicles, there'd probably be no horror movies.You got the D-Bag With Blond Girlfriend couple, the Bi-Racial couple, and the Lesbian couple. Charming, indeed.In a brief synopsis: They change the tire, get accosted by a big ugly truck, play games with the truck, get one of the lesbians chopped in half (quite bloodlessly, I may add. There were no intestines flying or blood spewing, just some fake legs in jeans), freak out, run for help, and find...you guessed it...a creepy farmhouse. There is actually a line in the movie said by D-Bag, "don't you guys watch horror movies? You don't go in the creepy farmhouse". Is this intended as a sort of self-deprecation on the part of the movie makers in that they know they fkkked up...? (symbolism of sorts?) But Wait! There's More! People start getting killed by the mad couple living in the Creepy Farmhouse, including, as predicted, the only cop to actually investigate the matter. A chainsaw enters the picture...Tobe Hooper's lawyers were probably calling at this point. It's bad enough they had the balls to steal half of the last name from TCM for the Mad Couple ("Mayhew" from Hewitt. I couldn't have faked it better).In the end, a couple of them survive. Somebody had to live to tell the story, always armed with the defense: "I didn't write this, really. I just acted in it".If you've been living in a cave, under a rock, or have been in a coma since 1973, see this movie.If you know better, you probably wouldn't be reading this.

While driving to Las Vegas with his college friends Rachel (Catherine Wreford), Liz (Tiffany Kristensen), Atlanta (Ashley Rebecca Hawkins), Sophie (Myiea Coy) and Adam (Tom NageL), the selfish and wealthy Mark (Alan Ritchson) decides to take a shortcut. Mark stresses with the driver of an old tow truck, and suddenly he sees a woman crossing the road and has a serious car accident. His friend Liz dies, and Mark and Adam run after the girl, who is wounded. The group decides to seek help while Atlanta stays with the severed body of Liz in the car. They find an old house in the woods where a family of psychopaths lives and they are chased by the insane family.One that reads my summary above would immediately recalls "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "The Hills Have Eyes", "Wrong Turn", "Timber Falls", "House of Wax", "Wolf Creek", "House of 1000 Corpses" and probably another dozen rip-offs of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and remakes. Therefore, there is no originality in the predictable plot. However, the unknown cast has many young actors and actresses and their performances are not bad. I agree that this routine of repeating and repeating the same storyline is annoying, but "The Butcher" has qualities and is not as bad as mentioned in many reviews. As an incentive to the young cast, my vote is six.Title (Brazil): "O Açougueiro" ("The Butcher")

"The Butcher" is a clichéd and stupid, though entertaining slasher.**SPOILERS**Driving to Las Vegas, friends Mark, (Alan Ritchson) Adam, (Tom Nagel) Sophie, (Myiea Coy) Atlanta, (Ashley Rebecca Hawkins) Liz, (Tiffany Christenson) and Rachel, (Catherine Wreford) to celebrate their upcoming graduation. Taking a detour, they become stuck in the wilderness and become stranded. Trying to get out, they happen upon a strange farmhouse out in the woods. Taking it upon themselves to investigate as no one seems to be home, but find no one as well. While they don't find anyone inside, what they do find is enough to spook them and force them to rethink their escape. When the owner shows up, who's a deranged serial killer, and begins to kill them off one-by-one, they try to use their instincts to survive. When it becomes even more apparent that there's more than one killer, they fight harder than before to escape.The Good News: This wasn't as bad as it could've been. This one manages one crucial trick that so many fail, which is to stay watchable when it suddenly veers off into familiarity. This type of scenario has played itself out pretty frequently, yet this one still keeps itself fun and enjoyable. The killer is introduced relatively early, and this means that most of the film is about thinning the cast off, and that leads to numerous scenes where the killer is stalking the group. When one character is trapped in the barn underneath the table where the killer is operating on a victim is particularly intense, and an earlier scene where one victim is trapped inside a car during an assault is it's finest moment. That it soon proceeds into a thrilling chase through the woods is a mere bonus. One other big suspense scene is the attack on the victims inside the walls of the house, as the pickax blasting holes to get at them comes close to nearly hitting them on several occasions and the flight to get out is pretty thrilling. The high body count is also a plus, as there's a tree brunch cutting a victim in half at the waist while they're trapped in a car, a pickax to the head, needles stabbed in the neck, a really gory shotgun blast to the stomach, a hanging on a barbed wire noose and a pitchfork through the stomach only for further killing to be done with a chainsaw, among others that aren't that particularly original. Still, that death is one of the finest in the film, as he repeatedly screams to not kill them even after they've already been impaled to a door. Still, they keep begging and the Butcher feels the need to go get a chainsaw to finish the job. A simply great kill and a solid favorite moment. Another choice moment comes when one lesbian refuses to leave behind her lover's severed torso and drags the upper half into the car to console it. That's the sort of committed relationship that isn't normally seen in a horror film and gives it a little extra that might not normally appear. With an ending twist that is quite thrilling and really sells the film, this one does have some good parts to it.The Bad News: This wasn't as bad as it could've been, but there were still problems. The biggest one is that the film is way to familiar. This type of film has been done numerous times before, and there are way too many spots where the viewer can spot where the scene was lifted from. There are two big ones that can spotted simply from the plot description, but there's at least four or five others that are cribbed pretty regularly. The last half is really one whole movie shoe-horned into the others, and it sticks out by following certain scenes really shot-for-shot. It's pretty distracting. Despite the sheer familiarity, there's rarely been a film that displays this much idiocy in one movie. Every stupid thing they could rally together, they do. They flash and taunt the serial killer. They drive around with people stuck out of sun-roofs. They get blind drunk immediately after the first person gets killed. Then, at the moment when they enter the barn, the biggest insult to our intelligence comes into play so far when one of them says that this kind of thing always happens inside the creepy farmhouse in horror movies. Not only does the movie know that it makes use of every threadbare cliché the genre has to offer, it also has the gigantic brass ones to tell us about them. There's no sense of it being an ironic comment on the situation, it is blindly stated for all to hear, and that is the big mistake. We know it's going to happen, but they don't and to make a comment like that simply shows what this is going to be. The killer is also physically revealed too early and could've benefited from a later reveal, but these are the main problems.The Final Verdict: While it may seem to be simply a knock-off other, more well-known films, this was still a pretty fun time that does manage to entertain. Though that rip-off feel might be enough for most to dismiss this, those that do decide will find much to like. It's simply a matter of whether or not a film being incredibly familiar is enough to warrant a viewing.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Brief Nudity