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The Love Butcher (1975)

Dir: Mike Angel/Donald M Jones
Writers: Mike Angel/James Evergreen

Caleb (Eric Stern) is a 'crippled' up, balding psychotic gardener with huge milk bottle glasses who uses his '2nd personality', a smooth (well he thinks he's smooth), handsome (well he thinks he's handsome), able bodied, hairy alter-ego named Lester, to seduce then kill the 'sinful' Women he works for.
As the Cops stand around shouting, (whilst the latest victim of the murder spree lies on the ground with a garden fork through her stomach), we are introduced to a fanatic Reporter who plans to track the killer down, little knowing that Caleb is also his girlfriend's Gardener……

 

Now this is a lost gem! A deranged, loony time capsule of bad 70's fashions, bad 70's music, and great 70's sleaze!
Stern does a job above and beyond the call of duty as 'both' Caleb and Lester. As Caleb he is a comic grotesque of supreme proportions. A dim-witted gimp who lives for lawns.

As Lester he is the biggest, most insane ego that ever rampaged on the big screen.

Using some amazingly bad disguises he charms his way into the homes of these sinful (and for the most part down right rude and nasty) Ladies, seducing them into bed then punishing their 'evil' ways. All due to a hastily explained bit of childhood trauma.

It's these sequences that give "The Love Butcher" its very soul. And what a twisted soul it is! And it's Stern, and his wonderfully mad dialogue, which makes these sequences the tour de force of trash entertainment they are.
As the madness gets into full swing he rants some of the best bad dialogue ever to pass through a viewers eardrums. Such gems (all said as his mad eyes bulge outwards and his quivering face explodes in a welter of ham acting) include… "You're going to make love with me, satiate me, fill me with nymphoid satisfaction"!
AND
"I'm going to awaken you from this Earthly nightmare, awaken you to the sweet repose of….death"!
AND
"Fill me with nympthoid satisfaction"!
AND
"You emasculate a man with you bottomless body pits"!
But that's not all! Prepare yourself for the best bit of deranged verbal self-promotion ever heard as he Lester to the Heavens "I am the great male Adonis of the Universe! I am beautiful! I am love! I am Lester and I am alive...alive"!!

Never has an actor thrown so much energy into a role!
As a smooth operator he's as rough as can be imagined as he somehow charms Ladies using his outrageous 'disguises'.
The denim wearing (open jacket displaying a manly chest) Texan Cowboy was bad enough, but wait till the 'Latin music seller' appears. Bristling under a sleazy 70's moustache and dodgy accent he hits the Woman with the full range of cheesy pick up lines. But she's having non of it, striking back with such devastating and hip dialogue as "Man I could really dig you, but wow, it just don't go down that fast. Dig"?

And that brings us to the other characters. Here, Mike Angel and James Evergreen, also give us some ripe support for Stern to play off.
Highlight of which has to be the couple where the Husband is older than his Wife.
Hubby puffs out his chest and, accompanied by a comedy wolf whistle on the soundtrack, attempts to show off his muscles. "I may be old but I still got pizzazz" he declares. Such 'hot' dialogue gets young Wifey going, "Do you think maybe, we could, you know.."
To which Hubby hysterically replies "Oh, hot damn Sheila! You know it isn't good to do it over once a month, it drains your blood and robs you of your vital energies"! Cue more comedy music and much laughter from the, by now, brain damaged audience.

The murders are suitably nasty with bright red blood being slopped around as Lester uses Caleb's beloved garden implements (even a water hose!) to bump off his victims.
Add a splash of briefly glimpsed full frontal nudity and all the ingredients for a trash classic are well and truly present.

Don't let all the humour (intentional and otherwise) fool you though. There is still a viscous streak to the film. Especially during an unexpectedly nasty and downbeat murder sequence where Angel and Evergreen don't give the viewer the expected conclusion.

SEE! Caleb goes to his one room home and have arguments with himself!
SEE! Caleb shout abuse at his 'Lester wig' as it sits on a featureless clothes dummy smoking a cigar!
SEE! Lester shout abuse at 'Caleb's glasses'!
SEE! Lester blow a kiss at himself in the mirror and whisper "You, you're beautiful"!
SEE! Lester walk like he's wet his pants as he closes in for the kill!

As a text book example of full on, entertaining movie psychosis, "The Love Butcher" is hard to beat. It took until 1983 for this to open on, the quickly disintegrating, 42nd Street. And we can only come to the conclusion that, by then, this warped slice of the 70's Sinema must have held an extra special something to those Grtindhouse denizens.

A must see movie for trash fans.