User Reviews

This has been called a horror film of sorts. It won't scare you, but it might just bore you to death because for the first hour plus it contains pitiful little action. There appears too to have been a half-hearted attempt to infuse some comedy into it. That fails dismally, assuming it was the case.

A man and his imbecile apprentice - apparently a waif he has more or less adopted - run a butcher's shop where on occasion they dispose of bodies from some unspecified criminal entity or organisation. A young deaf mute girl sees, or junior thinks she sees, a body being delivered, and when an idealistic doctor, a newbie in town, decides to teach the girl to communicate, junior decides she must die. This is a kid who can't kill a chicken without trashing the shop, so how can he dispose of a feisty tomboy, even if she can't scream the place down? After kidnapping her, he decides instead to try to appeal to her better nature, assuming a person's better nature includes keeping mum about feeding corpses to the neighbourhood.

Obviously this is not going to end well for the local murder inc; if you want to watch the finale, fast forward, you won't miss anything.

You'll note a number of recognizable actors in this low budget flick. Like Vic Tayback and Talia Shire, among others.

It's a very weird film that is now being distributed by Troma under the title "The Butchers" even though the end credits gives the title as "Maxie" complete with a title song called "Maxie!"

Post production facilities used were American Zoetrope, owned by Francis Ford Coppola.

Not a typical Troma film either. It's very slow and strange with no real gore or horror until the last 20 minutes. And even that is pretty tame.

It's really directed like a grindhouse movie through and through. Talia Shire will go on to be in the Rocky franchise three years later and Tayback will be in a sitcom.

There are other you will recognize too.

IMDb currently has this movie under the title "Murderer's Keep", with a TV release date of 1988. I suppose it's possible it got its first wide release on TV in 1988 (though it doesn't really seem like anything anyone would have bothered to broadcast), but I suspect it could date back to the early 1970s or maybe even the late 1960s! It's hard to understand how the title "Murderer's Keep" relates to the movie at all; I wonder if that title belongs to something else. "Maxie" and "The Butcher" are both logical titles.

Post production was by American Zoetrope films, and some of the people involved with it have credits for other AZ films. A lot of the people don't seem to have been involved with much, if anything, else.

I watched it on the DVD Troma recently released, giving it a new title of "The Butchers." They goof on the video box, claiming Talia Shire played Maxie. In fact, Talia Shire played a small role as a social worker named Sandy, and Maxie was played by the equally plain (at least here) KT Baumann. She doesn't appear to have any other film credits, at least under that name. The Internet Broadway Database lists a stage actress active in the 1960s and 1970s named KT Baumann AKA Kathryn Baumann, so she could be the actress listed on the IMDb as Kathrine Baumann.

Maxie is a young deaf mute girl who dresses like a tomboy and delivers newspapers. Her father is overprotective of her, not letting her go to school, afraid she'll be picked on there. He thinks he's doing the right thing, but he clearly isn't. Many people, including his boss, did not realize he had a daughter until a psychiatric medical consultant and a social worker move into town and try to help her. He's equally closemouthed about what happened to his wife.

A butcher, perhaps of eastern European descent, has had a shop in town for many years. He has an assistant, who is an orphaned, stuttering young man with emotional and behavioral problems. They periodically receive bodies of people, which they dispose of; whether they actually sell human meat, or just dispose of the bodies under the cover of the butcher shop, I'm not sure. They think that Maxie saw that they receive bodies, but I think they were mistaken. At first they're not concerned, because Maxie is mute, but when they hear the doctor thinks he might be able to teach Maxie to talk, they become alarmed.

Kind of an oddball movie. There is some blood in it, and there are periodic shots of meat grinders, and clucking chickens. Some chickens appear to actually get their heads chopped off. It seemed like there might have been some footage missing after a car crash, since one of the passengers winds up outside the car with someone else without explanation, or maybe it was just some bad storytelling/editing.

In MAXIE (aka: THE BUTCHERS), the title character (K.T. Baumann) sells newspapers around town. Meanwhile, the local butcher (Vic Tayback) is using his meat market to dispose of cadavers for certain "customers". Business is good.

Enter Sandy (Talia Shire), who works for the new doctor in town. Nothing much happens for quite a while in this film, unless you consider a broken toe or chicken murder to be exciting. Aside from the occasional cutting up of the odd body, it's more like a drama about small town America.

So, if you're expecting big scares, accentuated by gruesome shocks, forget it. That doesn't mean it's not watchable, it's just not a horror movie. At all. Any real thrills are saved for the final 20 minutes...