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Released By: MVD Visual
Released On: September 23, 2014
Director: Joaquin Montalvan
Cast: Allen East, S.E. Feinberg, Ron Jason, Theresa Holly, Doreen Barnes
Year: 2012
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The Film:
Well, kids....do you want to hear the story of the Bouncing Bunny? Or do you want to hear the story of the Hillbilly Butcher? Well, hell, if I was a kid listening to a grizzled old man telling a story, I might opt for the Hillbilly Butcher as well. What fun is a bouncing bunny compared to a backwoods lunatic? That's what I thought, anyway. Until I saw Joaquin Montalvan's Legend of the Hillbilly Butcher. My opinion now is to give me the bouncing bunny every damn time. Was I scared? Was the Hillbilly Butcher too much for me to take? Read on, and find out.
The Hillbilly, in this case, is Carl Henry Jessup (a great serial killer name if there ever was one), a long-haired, bearded backwoods dweller who has not been dealt the best hand in life. Witnessing the murder/suicide of his parents was certainly a traumatic event, compounded by his Daddy's dying gesture of handing l'il Carl his favourite butcher knife. See, Carl's daddy was a butcher, and by bequeathing the knife, Carl has decided to take on the trade himself. Strangely enough, though, Carl's little slice of home in the woods doesn't seem to have much in the way of livestock, unless you count a bunch of No Trespassing signs as a form of food.
Instead, Carl routinely stalks trespassers on his land and uses his Daddy's knife to carve 'em up into steaks and other assorted cuts of meat. Cutting across Carl's property to save time? That's a stabbin'. Laughing at his No Trespassing sign, while you're standing on the wrong side of it? That's a stabbin'. Taking a break from hunting on Carl's property so that you can unload your lunch in his bushes? You better believe that's a stabbin'. No matter what time of day or night, season, whatever, Carl will hunt you down for your meat. That is, of course, when he's not chuggin' a jug of 'shine with his buddy, or being taken care of by his purdy little sister Rae Lynn.
In spite of his happy go-lucky lifestyle, though, Carl Henry Jessup can not get the horrible loss of his parents out of his head, so he decides to do something about it. Drawing a pentagram on the floor, he makes a plea to the devil to sell his soul if his Daddy will just come back, alive and all. But as all of Carl's luck seems to go sour, so does his attempt to deal with evil forces, and the threatening Sam Bakoo becomes a somewhat half-assed intimidating presence.
Let's start with what Montalvan gets right with Legend of the Hillbilly Butcher; the idea (though it has most certainly been executed far more successfully) of a cannibalistic nutcase in the woods is a decent one. And props to the actors... more or less...that they don't seem to be too bad if not for the confines of the script and editing. Paul Respass does an okay job as Carl Henry, I mean, he seems slightly intimidating... though I'm not sure where a backwoods fella would round up all of them there giant tattoos... and his sister Rae Lynn (Theresa Holly) is easy on the eyes and probably would be better if she'd learned more of her lines (more on that in a second). But the script and the editing immediately get in the way of the delivery, wherein the actors utter some insanely dumb dialogue, a completely incompetent cut is made that creates overlong gaps in between responses, which gives the impression of REALLY BAD ACTING. In the editor's defence, some of the exchanges are horrible without the editing, but we'll call it a group effort. In one of the supplements, Theresa Holly admits that she didn't learn her lines for the first scene as a TECHNIQUE so that she could play the chemistry that her and Carl shared by ear, so to speak. I am not an actor, but that is not a particularly good technique, and results in a stilted improvisation that makes the intro to Bitchin' Camaro sound like Shakespeare.
HOWEVER, in defence of the actors, the dialogue, and the editing, it should be said that even if these were above par in terms of quality, the movie would still suffer from its worst affliction, the one that renders Legend of the Hillbilly Butcher almost completely unwatchable. You see those screencaps? The ones that look like I took a picture of my television, printed it out on a dot-matrix printer, wiped my nose with it while the ink was still wet, scanned it in monochrome and then coloured it in with crayons? Yes, that. For some reason, people are under the impression that to make a "gritty" picture (and yes, Montalvan and others have used the term "Grindhouse" in relation) you have to make it look as ugly as humanly possible. As if Tobe Hooper wanted The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to look like those 10th generation VHS dupes that we all saw, or Bruce Lee films are supposed to have tears all through the negative in order to be good. Montalvan has taken this to brand new heights, far surpassing the crap that came out of the "found footage" onslaught of low-budget films we were subjected to after The Blair Witch Project. Every frame of this film looks like it had every digital filter applied to it, blur, image judder, speckling, dirt, noise, flare-ups, so on and so forth. Not one frame of this film looks like the camera was focused.
The audio fares about as well, with conversations being way too quiet in the mix, and then suddenly exploding to levels that bring on distortion without notice, inspiring me to have my thumb over the volume control throughout the running time. And speaking of the running time, at 99 minutes, Legend of the Hillbilly Butcher overstays its already unwelcome welcome by at least 20 minutes.
Video/Audio/Extras:
MVD usually puts out a great product, and the transfer on this 1.78:1 anamorphic DVD may be stellar, but we'll never know. Because of the look of the film itself, virtually every frame looks like it's riddled with compression artifacts and other ugliness.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 track, as mentioned, is also a mess, with wild variations in volume and a ton of noise that must be the product of ineffective mic'ing of the scenes, or somebody who doesn't know what they're doing. To not be totally negative, the score, though simple and grating in some parts, does have a few interesting points that are reminiscent of some of those 70's "Grindhouse" classics.
There are a few extras on the disc as well. First up is Gutting Da Hillbilly Butcher (1:00:00) a very long look at the film that incorporates bits of interviews with Montalvan and the cast.
Straight Razor (5:59) is Montalvan's short film that pretty much looks the same as Hillbilly Butcher, with strange little video montages that emulate the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Horror Happens Interview (29:21) is an interview with internet radio/podcast/horror guy Jay K, who asks questions about the making of the film and seems to like it a fair bit more than I did.
Three Trailers for the film round out the disc.
The Final Word:
It's always nice to be able to talk positively about the work of a new filmmaker, but sadly, Legend of the Hillbilly Butcher is just not good. The presentation of the audio and video on the disc appears to be the work of somebody who went for style over substance and failed on both.
