The Cream of the Crap on Amazon Prime: ‘Butt Boy’

By its own account, Amazon Prime contains 26,300+ movies at any given time. Sorting through this mountain of titles is laborious, especially when time is of the essence. To find the kernels of wheat amidst this mountain cinematic of chaff, you could rely on the usual suspects pointing you towards hidden or overlooked gems. But we have decided to do things differently by diving headlong into the belly of the beast. Each month, we’ll review one of the best of the worst flicks currently available for rental on Prime, letting you know if it’s “all killer, no filler” or if we should burn it at the stake of Waters and Divine. And our first selection is ‘Butt Boy.’ 

Manson. Dahmer. Bundy. Thanks to endless true crime documentaries and podcasts, the hideous crimes of these serial killers have been burned into the American consciousness. By Butt Boy director/writer/star Tyler Cornack’s account, we should add the name of Chip Gutchell to this rogue’s gallery of nightmares. Eschewing knives, guns and other implements of death, Gutchell’s method of destruction is far more horrific. Instead, he sucks up his victims – men, children, pets, and the odd office plaque – up his ass where they meet the darkest of fates. Played straight from the jump, this 2020 flick is the rarest of gems: a winking self parody that will have you shitting yourself in hysterics when, in the third act, one of the cast screams one of the most bone chilling lines in cinematic history: “It’s a fart!”

Kritika County, Florida in an unspecified year. Chip Guttman (Tyler Cornack) is a schlubby worker-bee at RTM, a tech company straight out of Office Space. He deals with the daily indignities of the workplace – overhyped bosses and coworkers, mind numbingly bland IT duties – and finds no respite at home where his shrewish wife Anne (Shelby Dash) is decidedly more focused on their new baby than their marriage.

The inciting incident in the narrative comes when Chip has a routine proctological exam, a literal and metaphorical finger up the ass that flips a switch in our protagonist. Finding sexual pleasure in all things ass-play, he’s soon shoving all manner of items up his bum – soap, cleaning items, VCR remotes and the like. In a wan effort to spice up their sex life, he invites Anne to the anal fun-fest but she demurs and for her sins the family dog becomes his next victim.

Cut to nine years later and the film shifts to a local AA meeting. It introduces us  to Russell Fox (Tyler Russell, simultaneously channeling both Deniro and Pacino in Heat), a police detective beset by all manner of personal demons after the disappearance of his son. In a bit of kismet, Chip–also at the meeting but for more rectal addictions –becomes Russell’s sponsor. Their paths intertwine further when Russell heads up an investigation of a child who disappeared at a “Take Your Kid to Work Day” event at Chip’s place of employment.

Combing through the detritus of the office, the detective discovers a clue in Chip’s cubicle that somehow leads him to a terrifying conclusion: His AA sponsor, Chip, is an anal serial killer and, like Thanos gathering the infinity stones in Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame, the titular Butt Boy is growing stronger with each victim sucked up his ass. The inevitable showdown between Chip and Russel at a local laser tag facility and the scene that follows from inside Chip’s ass, had me screaming with laughter.

This is one of those rare flicks that anyone for a taste for the absurd and ridiculous should see. Beyond the madness of the performances–which the actors play with utter sincerity across the board–the candy-colored set design and pumping musical score are all aces. And writers Kornack and Ryan Koch were clearly paying attention in film school as they adapt Chekov’s age-old adage –“If in the first act you have a pistol, then in the following act it should be fired”–in the most insane yet plot-driven of ways.

If John Waters and David Fincher had a baby, their cinematic progeny would look something like the mad genius of this flick. Don’t be an ass–check out Butt Boy.