The Butcher is a 1970 French psychological thriller film written and directed by Claude Chabrol and starring Stéphane Audran and Jean Yanne.

Set in the village of Trémolat, it tells the story of butcher Popaul who falls in love with Hélène, the head teacher of the school, while a murder spree is taking place in the area.

While gathering mushrooms together, Popaul asks Hélène why she is not in a relationship, to which she explains an unhappy love affair years ago that took her months to recover from.

Soon after the news of the murder of a young woman reaches the town, a second victim, the assistant teacher's wife, is discovered by Hélène and her pupils during a school excursion.

Popaul, cornering her at knife point, tells her that he had bought an identical lighter after losing the first one and explains what drives him to commit the murders.

[4] In the January–February 1972 edition of the Los Angeles Free Press, critic Dick Lochte called Le Boucher the best of the director's films so far, "a wonderfully controlled psychological thriller" and "a compact, hard, bright jewel of a movie", praising, like Canby, actors Audran and Yanne.