Though it premiered in England almost a year ago at London’s Fright fest event (in its uncut form), HATCHET has to wait until September before being officially unleashed on genre fans in cinemas across the UK and the US (with the latter territory losing some seconds of gore after a lengthy battle with the MPAA for an R rating). Rest assured, it will be worth the wait.
The poster for this dynamic retro-slasher makes writer-director Adam Green’s approach clear : not only does it boast the tagline “Old school American horror”, but it also proclaims, reassuringly : “It’s not a remake. It’s not a sequel. And it’s not based on a Japanese one.” The movie lives up to its own modest self-hype from the very start, with guest star Robert Englund disemboweled and Joshua Leonard (of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT) ripped in half before a blast of Marilyn Manson instigates the title sequence. Avoiding the tired self-conscious movie referencing of the post-SCREAM slasher cycle, Green has made a movie that gets lots of genuine laughs, mostly from witty character interaction, while not sacrificing atmosphere, suspense and splatter.
It’s Mardi Gras in a tackily portrayed New Orleans, where girls of all different shapes and sizes are flashing their boobs and pals Joel Moore and Dean Richmond are looking for excitement. Stumbling across “Rev Zombie’s Voodoo Shop”, they meet ominous ex-tour guide Tony Todd who notes, reflectively, “Insurance got too high…after what happened…”. In spite of the ominous warning signs, the pals decide to take part in a “Haunted swamp tour” spearheaded by a con-man tour guide (Parry Shen).
Sharing the boat with them are an amateur pornographer and his two starlets (one of them played by Mercedes McNab, playing a variation on her BUFFY airhead Valley Girl character), who are attempting to compete with BAYOU BEAVERS in the New Orleans adult movie stakes; a downbeat quiet girl (Tamara Feldman); and an old tourist couple. The movie’s veteran make-up effects supervisor, John Carl Buechler, gets to utter a signature slasher movie line – “Y’all gonna die!” – as a piss-drinking ‘gator hunter. When the tour boat breaks down, the group find themselves stalked by local legend Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder), a horribly disfigured man reportedly killed years earlier in one of those Halloween-prank-gone-wrong scenarios.
Beyond the in-joke casting of slasher movie icons Englund, Todd and Hodder (who plays both Crowley’s grief-stricken father and, in grotesque ELEPHANT MAN-inspired make-up, Crowley himself), HATCHET is a smart, confident spin on the well-worn sub-genre, galvanized by a terrific, unusually likeable cast and Buechler’s marvelously excessive murder scenes. There’s great bitchy dialogue between the hot but brain-dead starlets (“You do know your vibrator goes in your cooch, not your ear, right?”), with McNab a delight as a babe who thinks that the “police” and the “cops” are two separate entities. (BUFFY fans will appreciate her various topless scenes, too). For once, this movie gives us funny, endearing people to root for, rather than becoming an extended waiting game in which we grow impatient biding time before the bastards die.
Green’s script has clever gags – one involving the theme song from DAWSON’S CREEK – and occasional movie quotes (notably a reprise of an immortal line from John Carpenter’s THE THING) but never short-changes on intense set-ups and seat-ejecting jolts. Crowley is the best new slasher villain in a long time, and the graphically gruesome murders are superbly staged on a low budget : power tools are abused, there’s at least one cool decapitation and, in a show-stopper, a woman has her head ripped open via her mouth.
At the very end, Green pays direct homage to FRIDAY THE 13TH for a cool swamp-set coda, before one final shock leading to a TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE-inspired fade-out. In an affectionate movie that keeps the overt references to a minimum, this final bit of respectful “borrowing” is so well done, you won’t mind.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
