Four kids out for some fun upset the wrong gang of cannibal greasers and are chased around a city at night while being picked off one by one. The script for Butcher boys was written by the writer of the original Texas chainsaw massacre with most of the ideas from that movie being regurgitated here only slightly tweaked. Several scenes are reused which dampens the impact as you've seen it before. It also borrows from other films most notably Judgement night.

In its favour Butcher boys does have a pleasingly nihilistic tone as once the film gets going nothing is explained. Who are these rockabilly cannibals? Why are the cops scared of them? Just what is that weird restaurant/gentlemans club they're running all about? But the tentative approach to the violence portrayed is at odds with the gonzo storytelling. Apart from two or three slightly graphic scenes the blood and gore is fairly minimal. This could be due to budget constraints. If I so I would have maybe saved the money spent on the constant nighttime aerial shots and spent that money on more prosthetic effects. A little more violence would have pushed this film up another notch on the crazy level making it that little bit more memorable. The nihilism does eventually reach it's apex in the finale when all hell breaks lose. Unfortunately this scene also turns a few things already set up in the film on its head. Making you question even further the lack of coherence.

I did find watching Butcher boys a fairly frustrating experience. I could definitely feel the opportunity for a good if not great movie in there somewhere. Visually it's very competent, it's well filmed and has a certain visual style all credit to the directors achieving this on a minimal budget. The sound and score are also strong. On the whole the performances are good with the odd exception. The problem lies mainly with the script, it borrows too much from other films, some of it could be classed as a knowing wink or nod to the writers previous work. Although had it been written by anyone else I think we'd be calling it plagiarism.

In the end I was left neither loving or hating the film hence the score. Maybe on a second viewing I'd like it more, but at the moment the only taste left in my mouth is vanilla.

Now this is some strange movie. It already had me reeled in with the strange intro and straightforward title sequence that only shows aerial footage of houses and streets. The paper thin plot unfolds pretty fast with a bunch of teens on a night out starting out in a restaurant and then quickly descending into chaos after the drunk party girl first gets two guys angry at a filling station that start a car chase with the 4 teens. Not even 10 minutes into the movie and they are in deep sh*t already... the 2 guys seem pretty aggravated and you are prepared for the worst when the whole thing turns around in a sudden twist just to get the 4 teens involved with some even weirder nutters. Now that is basically what the movie goes on like... its a continuous roller coaster ride on a downward spiral into utter madness. "Butcher Boys" has a strange brooding atmosphere with sudden explosive outburst of violence and plays heavily on horror clichés with endless chases through dark alleys and derelict buildings. The thugs chasing the teens are a strange mix of 60ies leather jacket Italian rockers and supernatural demons... has a strong "Sometimes they come back" feeling.

After some pretty drawn out chases the movie turns into a bizarre Texas Chainsaw Massacre direction when the girls are abducted into a underground society that just gets weirder and weirder... weird doctors, chained monster, a girl with Stockholm syndrome, cannibal orgies and plans to breed a monster baby...it just gets weirder and weirder and there is never a way out and always a more terrifying monster behind the exit door.

Seems like your typical horror fare and borrows from the classics. But what makes "Butcher Boys" special is that it includes a lot of humorous elements that could be taken as normal horror stupidity. But honestly... scenes like when the girl is locked in a dark room, then finds a blowtorch to light the darkness and look around and then with the blowtorch finds dynamite or several ridiculously drawn out scenes hiding in lockers or sneaking around a sleeping fat guy are obviously making fun of the genre. When a girl is crawling under the floorboards with every now and then creepy hands grabbing for her it has the feeling of an annoying "tunnel of horror" ride. But while many horror movies use these elements seriously it just has to be satire here... if anything the scene with the girl hiding in front of a TV shop with a TV playing uplifting music and flower videos should prove that this is a pitch black comedy. There are so many tongue-in-cheek jokes and when psychos in drag are running around and starting a giant shootout with machine guns and bazookas its just WTF on heavy rotation.

I found the movie strangely fascinating since it mixed the humor with a dense horror movie atmosphere in a rather untypical way that kept the movie entertaining up until the end that was just about as dumb as way too many other movies.

Like someone else said.... get your buddies and some beers and have fun. Its sure an entertaining ride but there are some elements that are thrown in (considering the title they should be important I guess) but just end up on the sidelines with all the crazy stuff happening. So don't even expect a proper plot!

Returning home from a birthday party, a group of friends run afoul of a gang of devious cannibals looking to sell human skin to likewise investors and must try to fend off the deadly members before succumbing to their whims.

This is an utterly wretched and nearly worthless affair that has almost no redeeming values. The fact that this is as brutal and vicious as it is does have some nice qualities about it, but the mere fact that this one has as much wrong with it as it does is the real hindering problem here. The fact is that this one tries so hard to be seen as an urban variation of "TCM" that it goes for out-and-out copying several points from that movie and passing them off as original scenes in here. The chase through the alleys and back-door shops is mirrored from the chase through the woods in the original, a bounty hunter looking for a kidnapped member of the family is straight from one of the sequels and most insulting of all is that it apes the dinner sequence nearly shot-for-shot with the exact same results here, though this one tends to use it as an homage to that film more so than because it fits within the storyline construct because it makes no sense for the people in this film to behave like that for any reason other than outright pillage. That brings up the film's two biggest flaws, because nothing in here makes sense since no one says anything about what's going on. It tends to think that just because people are being vicious beaten and battered that they're supposed to feel sorry for what's happening to them, but it never says anything about what's going on. All attempts at expanding what the group's doing is mockingly laughed at and shot down, so it's a real mystery if they're cannibals, flesh peddlers or just flat-out wackos that have a fascination with the 50s' Greaser look since they all look like rejects from a hot-rod teen-angst movie. The other big flaw here is that this is done in an urban area of a major city, yet the police are shown as wholly incompetent and afraid of the gang while the locals are more than willing to live in the area as long as they don't mess with the group for there's several times where the police have the power to help them but choose not to, while the locals are shown to be abjectly afraid of interfering for fear of running afoul of the gang. This is unrealistic on a number of levels and is capped off by the frantic and confusingly irritating finale that upsets the whole nature of what's gone on before it. As well, there's a small dose of minor flaws like too much blackened screen-time without showing anything or being unable to find a topless actress for the role that it leaves this with a heaping slew of detrimental problems and nothing to save it.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Nudity.