Slaughterhouse (1987)
Director: Rick Roessler
An old farmer (a raving nutcase) and his beloved son (a 360 pound pig-man named Buddy who grunts and squeals and loves to chop, dice and skewer human beings) lament the fate of the old skilled hog farmer, now giving way to modern factory-type slaughterhouses. When businessmen make an offer for the scuzzy rundown place, the father and son refuse.
In the long line of slashers that came out in the 80s a few were lost in the shuffle. While films like, Intruder, were gems that were unfairly overlooked during their time, we also have a few that may have been better off left in the time capsule. Slaughterhouse is sadly one of those films. Now don’t get me wrong, it has a unique plot. The giant sized killer making pig sounds is amusing, and we do have some cool moments of gore. But the film is a film that has far more wrong with it than it has right. While some might think it’s so bad it’s good. I think the slow nature of it overall just dragged it down too much.
For one, the characters here are about as plain Jane as you could get. We know the female lead wants to make a horror movie and we know she’s the daughter of the town’s sheriff. But outside of that we have nothing else at all to connect to or latch on to about her or anyone else. I don’t like the overly gimmick or stereotypical characters, but these people don’t even seem normal. They more or less could have been replaced with cardboard stand-ins and nobody would have cared or noticed. All this leads up to a slow moving slasher with some good moments of gore here and there, but it’s overall forgettable. It does however give us an ending a Texas Chainsaw Massacre film would somewhat reuse years later. It may be worth checking out for slasher fans, but not worth breaking your neck over trying to seek out.
(5.5/10)
