Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker

by Joseph Burgo, Richard Natale

Something awful happened at Billy's house...

Billy Lynch was a handsome high school basketball star with a promising future, living happily with young and pretty Aunt Cheryl.

Until the day he came home from school to find that Aunt Cheryl had killed the TV repairman. With a butcher knife.

The repairman went crazy. Got violent. Attacked Aunt Cheryl.

At least that's what Aunt Cheryl and Billy said happened...

But behind the guise of self-defense lurks a growing evil - an evil so calculating, so hidden, so viciously insane, that even clever Detective Carlson will be wrong, dead wrong... about Billy, about Aunt Cheryl, about the ever-brewing plans of the... BUTCHER, BAKER, NIGHTMARE MAKER

Genres: Horror

224 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 1, 1981

Reviews

[Nev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker was pretty damn progressive for a horror movie from 1981. The gay character is one of the few trustworthy, good people in the movie and all the homophobes are very clearly portrayed as the villains. In 1981!! It’s also just a fun, bonkers movie. So when I learned that there was a novelization I knew I’d have to track it down to see how the queer storyline played out in the book version.

Even though I love the movie I didn’t go into the book with high expectations at all. But I really ended up enjoying this! So many of the characters get to have more fleshed out backstories. Especially Tom Landers. It was so great to be able to read more about his life as a gay man in the early 80s, his relationship, and also his experience growing up and realizing his sexuality. There are so many poignant moments relating to his character in the book, way more than you might expect for a novelization of a horror movie. It legitimately made me cry at one point.

I also appreciated getting to see a little bit more of what happened after the climax of the movie. There’s a little scroll in the closing credits to wrap up the characters’ stories, but it’s more rewarding to actually get to see it play out in the book.

The one aspect of the book that I had an issue with was the pacing. It felt so stop and start. Like we’d get to a really suspenseful, violent scene where the POV character is encountering another person. But instead of just letting that play out it would switch POV to the other character and go back to earlier in the day and follow them leading up to the same interaction. So it interfered with the tense feeling around the climax because it kept leaving that scenario.

If you loved the movie I’d definitely say to try tracking down a used copy of the book. I can’t say how the book would stand on its own without having seen the movie. But I think that if you’re particularly interested in queer representation in genre fiction then it would be a good one to pick up if you can find it.

[D'artagnan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yum, gratuitous carnage of the pitchfork and axe variety. I read this at a young age, while spending a summer back east with my various relatives. It impressed me at the time, for it's shamelessly graphic violence and the ways I found to feel unafraid afterwards, in my grandmother's creepy old house, while those images replayed themselves vivid red in my impressionable 11-year old mind. It's an art, like any other, albeit a disturbing one.

[Mikepottz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cheryl loved Billy more than his parents did. Billy's parents die in a car accident, logs smashing through the windscreen separating the head. Billy now 3 years old being brought up by his Aunt Cheryl. Billy arrives home from school one day, a knife plunging through the air, the sound tearing into flesh, the Aunt killing a TV repairman. An investigation starts to reveal the repairman sexual preferences and the Aunts story of attempted rape comes into question. Trauma brought on by incidents when Cheryl was a teenager result in her insanity/covering up past issues. Parents burnt alive in a house, tempered car brakes, a butchers knife into flesh, relishing as the eyes start to die. A scythe rusty but sharp hacks off a head, hot steaming intestines onto the cold floor. Slow burn of impeding death and truths leaked out.

[Zeke · Rating 4 out of 5]

The movie Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker is one of the standout entries in the Golden Age of Slasher Movies (1978-1984) so it would only make sense to have a novelization that is just as much an enjoyable experience. The novelization is proof that, sometimes, a book can explore stories in a more engaging way. As the book's mystery unfolded in page-turner fashion, I kept thinking this was likely how the story was originally envisioned -- a murder mystery that is peeled back, layer by layer, through the lenses of various characters involved.

The book's biggest accomplishment over the movie is its ability to explore side-characters in greater depth; we still get plenty of POVs from poor Billy Lynch and his deranged Aunt Cheryl, but we also get to know the motivations behind the bigoted Detective Carlson (here an angry divorcee with an estranged son), Billy's doting girlfriend Julie Lindon (here a cheerleader and not a photographer), and especially the homosexual Tom Landers (here an English teacher and not a basketball coach). Tom's pained reactions to his lover's murder is affecting, especially since he has to keep it so private out of fear of small town homophobia, and in some points the book shifts its narrative to make Tom the protagonist. We also get to learn more about Cheryl's descent into madness, including a plague of "accidents" that seem to follow her.

While there is violence in the story, both the movie and book focus attention more on the psychological aspects of the story, which make it stand out from the glut of slasher stories. If you are a fan of the 1981 cult classic, or if you are new to the Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker saga, the paperback is well-worth the read.