Really Awful Movies

Forget candy stores, the RAM team were kids in a horror store (***LISTEN TO OUR BUTCHER SHOP PODCAST for more***)

In putting together this site, we’ve been lucky enough to meet lots of up-and-coming talent. This most definitely includes Carlos Henriques, one-half of The Butcher Shop, effects guys who specialize in designing and creating unique and high-level makeup effects, creatures, prostheses, human replicas, specialty props and gore effects. They had a booth at Horror-Rama 2015 where we met Carlos and we were invited to check out his place of business. We leapt at the opportunity like it was a jump scare.

We decided to make an afternoon of it, heading out to an industrial hinterland of Hamilton that could’ve been cutting room floor remnants for the intro to The Sopranos. It was pretty darn appropriate.

The Butcher Shop has got IMDb credits as long as your (severed) arm and it was fantastic to be able to hear about the men and women behind practical special effects wizardry. They’re responsible for effects in Berkshire County, Aladdin and the Death Lamp, Bottom Feeder, Celebrity Death Match, and the incredible short, Heir to name but a few.

A feast for the senses. Look at all this amazingly cool stuff. Practical effects can make or break a horror film. Today’s over-reliance on CG is to the genre’s detriment. Nothing beats a cool set-piece involving some of these masks/props.

Hmmm…Tasty viscera…

And because we’re hams, we couldn’t help but get in on the action.

A big thanks to Carlos and his team. This was something we’ll never forget.

CHECK OUT THE BUTCHER SHOP FOR MORE…

Two bickering brother kidnappers argue about tea and bugs while at, well, The Cottage.

One nebbish (“I don’t like lying!”) and one self-styled tough (“stop whining and sort yourself out”), have kidnapped a blonde hottie Tracy, who’s been knocked out with chloroform and is snoozing in their trunk.

After she comes to she head-butts one of them smack dab in the kisser breaking his nose, the brothers argue about the finer points of putting the fear of god into someone clearly fearless: “You couldn’t scare a child in the dark!”

They phone her father demanding a ransom and her step brother, with whom they’re in cahoots, agrees to deliver the bag of money: one problem, it’s all tissue paper. This puts the son’s life in danger as the hostage’s father is an underworld figure who runs a strip club (perhaps not someone you’d be too keen on extorting, but why quibble?)

In this Hitchcockian black comedy farce, Tracy soon frees herself from her captors and they’re chasing her through a hick hamlet in Yorkshire. Soon soon they all have bigger fish and chips to fry: there’s a deranged disfigured farmer, holed up in a creepy farmhouse who’s fashioned masks a la the family in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Soon, the criminal element is running for their lives, getting its comeuppance and their captive is…well…we can’t spoil too much.

A genre film caper combined with a straight-ahead slasher this is an odd duck, IMDb critics have complained that The Cottage has a foot in two camps.

However, cracker-jack dialogue (one of the kidnappers, Reece Shearsmith, played Mark in Shaun of the Dead) and irresistible energy keep things humming along. Plus, there are amazing things done with pickaxes. A bloody good time.

*** (out of 5)