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HATCHET (2007)

Posted in 2007, Horror DVDs, LL Soares Reviews, VIOLENCE! with tags Adam Green, HATCHET, kane hodder, Slasher movies, Swamp monsters, Tony Todd, victor crowley on February 16, 2011 by knifefighter

(Here’s a blast from the past – my review of the original HATCHET from September 2007, during HATCHET’s brief theatrical release before it went quickly to DVD ~LLS)

MOVIE REVIEW: HATCHET (2007)
by L.L. Soares

I saw the movie HATCHET, and I have two reactions to it. The first reaction is that it’s the equivalent of a fun (but dumb) amusement park ride. My second reaction is that I feel like I’ve been cheated.

You see, I was really looking forward to HATCHET because it’s been advertising itself as “Old School American Horror.” To some of us, that phrase means something. It hearkens back to the golden decade of the 1970s, when we got treated to intense horror classics like the original THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974), the original HALLOWEEN (1978), the original DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) (Don’t you just hate that I have to put the word “original” in front of each of those movies, so you know what I’m talking about?), and the soon to be “original” LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) (since we all know it’s inevitable that will get the official remake treatment at some point too) (EDITOR’S NOTE: AND I WAS RIGHT!).

HATCHET was building up a lot of buzz on the premise that it was a throwback to the horror films of the ‘70s, and me being the silly person I am, I thought this meant suspenseful, brutal, edge-of-your seat filmmaking. But it turns out I was wrong. “Old School American Horror” wasn’t meant to imply the 70s at all in this context. Instead, HATCHET is like the horror films of the ‘80s, especially stuff like FRIDAY THE 13^th PART III (1982) – you know, when slasher films were getting a bad name and were becoming jokes because of all the damn sequels and cliches?

Which is kind of funny, because the monster in HATCHET is played by Kane Hodder who played Jason in FRIDAY THE 13^TH Numbers 7 – 10. See how everything comes full circle?

HATCHET revels in the whole “jokey horror” genre, where we get as many jokes and one-liners as we get thrills. And frankly, I’m getting a little tired of that, since it’s seldom done well. The story is simple enough – hell, it seems a bit too simple. A bunch of friends are at Mardi Gras. One of them, Ben (Joel David Moore) refuses to have a good time because he’s a whiner who’s devastated over his recent breakup with his girlfriend (who can blame her?). So his buddy Marcus (Deon Richmond) agrees to go with him on a late night “swamp tour” through the spooky bayou to lift his spirits. There are other people on the tour, including an older couple, a sleazy filmmaker and his two “actresses” (who constantly pull their tops down “Girls Gone Wild” style), and a weird girl who won’t say much. The guide for the tour is an Asian guy who talks in a cajun accent and pretends to be a local – but he has no idea what he’s doing. While out on the swamp, their boat gets damaged and they have to run to shore before the alligators get them. But, in the woods, there is a worse danger. His name is Victor Crowley.

Victor (Kane Hodder) is a deformed freak who looks an awful lot like the monster in Tobe Hooper’s THE FUNHOUSE (1981) with some ELEPHANT MAN (1980) thrown in for good measure. As a child, Victor was taunted by other children because of his tragic appearance. One Halloween, some kids threw firecrackers at his house to torment him and ended up burning the place down by accident. Trapped inside, poor Victor panicked and struggled to get out. His father, trying to get inside, used a hatchet on the door. Unfortunately, Victor’s face is pressed close to the other side….and you get the picture from there.

For some untold reason, Victor’s still alive. And, after being born deformed, then burned, hatcheted and left for dead, you can understand why he’s boiling mad!

What happens next is just what you think. The group of morons who got stranded in the woods get picked off one by one by the deranged freak.

Once Victor appears, the movie does take a big leap forward. Let’s face it, no matter how flawed the movie is, he’s a cool character who deserved a better storyline. But, until he shows up, it’s just a lot of lame jokes and annoying characters. And it is kind of fun how he constantly pops up when people least expect it, to kill and mutilate. There were rumors that this movie was going to get an NC-17 rating originally, and you can see why. There’s tons of decapitations, bodies getting cut in two, and arms being ripped off. But it’s more cartoony than scary.

A little Victor Crowley goes a long way, but unfortunately, he’s not enough to save the movie. And it certainly wasn’t good enough to justify the ten dollar ticket price I paid.

Sure, I laughed a few times, and I dug the carnage, but HATCHET was ultimately a disappointment. If they’d actually played it straight and emulated the films of the 1970s – you know, real OLD SCHOOL AMERICAN HORROR - then maybe HATCHET would have been a film worth recommending. I know I was expecting something much more intense. If this sounds like the kind of goofy fun film you’d enjoy, then by all means, check it out. Everyone else, you can wait for the DVD.

Another lesson in “Don’t believe the hype.”

HATCHET 2 (2010)

Posted in 2011, Controverisal Films, DVD Review, Horror DVDs, LL Soares Reviews, Sequels, Slasher Movies, VIOLENCE! with tags Adam Green, Danielle Harris, HATCHET, Hatchet 2, kane hodder, Swamp ghosts, Tony Todd, victor crowley on February 15, 2011 by knifefighter

HATCHET 2 (2010)
DVD Review by L.L. Soares

I’d originally planned to review HATCHET 2 last October, when it was released in theaters. There was some controversy at the time, because it was released unrated in mainstream movie theaters.This was the first time a mainstream horror film was released unrated because of violence since George Romero’s classic DAWN OF THE DEAD in 1978. I guess the big theater chains weren’t ready for this, though, because they pulled HATCHET 2 after only three days. It was a big deal at the time. I just missed seeing it in time to review it, and had to wait for the DVD, which just came out this month.

So, with all the controversy and hype, was HATCHET 2 worth it?

Well, yes and no. First off, let’s address the previous film, Adam Green’s HATCHET (2007), which was reviewed on this site awhile back. I remember being very disappointed with it at the time. The marketing strategy at the time was all about calling it a return to “Old School American Horror,” which I mistakenly thought meant a throwback to the meaner, more violent films of the 1970s. But it was way too jokey and downright silly for most of its running time to be genuinely scary. I didn’t like a lot of the characters, and when Kane Hodder popped up onscreen as the deformed monster, Victor Crowley, it gave the movie a boost, but not a big enough one to save it.

That said, the original HATCHET is one of those movies that has grown on me over time. I still don’t think it’s a great movie, but it is a fun movie.

Watching HATCHET 2, I noticed one thing right off the bat— that things have a more serious tone this time around. There are some goofy characters in the mix, but they don’t dominate the proceedings, and strangely, the plot of HATCHET 2 actually kind of makes sense!

The movie begins exactly where the last one ends. In the first movie, a bunch of people taking a boat tour through the bayou end up trapped when the boat breaks down in Honey Island Swamp, and local legend/boogieman Victor Crowley turns out to be real and picks them off one by one, in increasingly gory ways. At the end of the original HATCHET, everyone has been killed except Marybeth (Tamara Feldman), who somehow escapes a gruesome fate.

At the beginning of HATCHET 2, Marybeth (now played by Danielle Harris) is found by the old Cajun gator hunter named Jack Cracker, who saves her and brings her back to his shack in the middle of the bayou. He’s helpful enough until he finds out Marybeth’s last name, Dunsted, and realizes that her daddy was Samson Dunsted, one of the casualties in the first HATCHET movie. He immediately demands that she leave his house, and even pulls a gun on her to make his point.

After she’s gone, Victor Crowley shows up keep Jack’s mouth shut – for good.

Marybeth heads back to New Orleans and seeks out Reverend Zombie (Tony Todd), who we saw briefly in the first movie, when Todd’s character just had a cameo. The Reverend tells Marybeth the story of Victor Crowley, how he was born as a kind of monster due to a curse and how Marybeth’s father was one of three boys who set Crowley’s house on fire years before, leading to the boy’s death.

So how is Victor Crowley able to pop up and kill people if he’s dead? Because he’s a ghost, and not just any kind of ghost. He’s a “repeater.” Which means that he comes back every night, over and over again, until he’s able to get his revenge and the curse is finally lifted.

At least this is Reverend Zombie’s theory. But he’s so sure of himself that he gathers a bunch of local fishermen and gator hunters to help him. He tells them it’s an expedition to find his damaged tour boat and bring it back, but his real plan is to offer up the two men who were, as kids, Samson Dunstan’s accomplices in burning down the Crowley house. Zombie figures if he can appease Crowley, all this ghost business will go away, and he’ll be free to cash in on the swamp (Is there really that much money in late-night swamp tours?).

Of course, things don’t go according to plan, and over the course of the movie, people die in lots of awful ways, including:

Strangled with their own intestines
Getting a hatchet to the head
Having an electric sander scrape off the back of a skull
Being chainsawed between the legs and up, until they’re cut in half
One guy having his mouth pressed against a table and then Victor kicks the guy’s head from behind (kind of a variation on the old “curb job”)
Getting chopped in half and having their skin pulled off

As you can see, the reason this movie was released unrated was because of all the gore. And while HATCHET 2 is an okay horror flick overall, it’s the gore that’s the draw here, if you’re into that kind of thing. Although I saw the original HATCHET in a movie theater and I remember it being pretty gory as well, that one somehow got an R rating.

But as we know from those “Director’s Cut” DVD releases, the difference between an R Rating, and the MPAA rejecting a film for that rating, can be just a matter of two or three minutes’ worth of explicit violence. That violence, in HATCHET 2, is exaggerated and cartoony, and I can’t imagine anyone could really be offended by it. And I think director Adam Green and his studio should be applauded for bypassing the MPAA and releasing HATCHET 2 unrated, even if they didn’t fully succeed at it and the movie got pulled early.

Overall, I thought HATCHET 2 was an improvement over the first film. The tone is more serious. The acting is better. We’ve got Tony Todd in a main role here (instead of just the cameo he had in the first film) and he’s always entertaining – even in stuff like this, and the even worse ARE YOU SCARED 2 (2009). I just wish the guy could get better movies to be in! Danielle Harris as Marybeth is pretty good, too, and is sympathetic as the last of the Dunsteds.

And the Victor Crowley scenes are way over the top, just as they should be.

I reviewed the first movie before we started giving ratings. But if I gave the first HATCHET one knife, let’s say, then HATCHET 2 certainly deserves two or even two and a half.

In other words, HATCHET 2 is worth the price of a DVD rental. Check it out.

HATCHET II PULLED FROM THEATERS PREMATURELY

Posted in 2010, Campy Movies, LL Soares Reviews, Slasher Movies with tags Adam Green, Banned Films, Hatchet II, kane hodder, Prematurely Silenced, victor crowley on October 6, 2010 by knifefighter

I hate to show up empty-handed.

I’d planned to do a review of HATCHET II this week, but I just missed it. Heading over to the movie theater on Monday night, I was perplexed to see it wasn’t listed on the big board above the cashiers. When I asked one of them where the movie went, they were as confused as I was. Didn’t this movie just open last Friday? Don’t movies usually at least get a week in theaters, whether they do well or not?

HATCHET II, Adam Green’s gory sequel to his campy cult movie HATCHET (2006), starring Kane Hodder as maniacal hatchet murderer Victor Crowley, was already getting some attention because it was one of the rare times that the AMC Theater chain had released a movie that didn’t have a MPAA rating. Too gory for an “R” rating, movies like HATCHET II either get sliced to the bone to get the R, or go straight to DVD. But this time around, AMC decided to do something different. They decided to put HATCHET II in theaters, uncut and unrated.

For whatever reason (it’s still not clear yet), they changed their minds and yanked the film after just three days. This is not the way business is usually done. And my thinking I could go see HATCHET II on a quiet Monday night turned out to be a bad decision. I should have caught it earlier. Now I’ll have to wait for the DVD.

We’ll definitely review it here at CinemaKnifeFight.com when it comes out on DVD. But it would have been nice to see it on the big scream – er, screen.

~L.L. Soares

PS: We’ll return with new content tomorrow.

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HATCHET!

Posted in 2007, LL Soares Reviews, Slasher Movies, VIOLENCE! with tags HATCHET, kane hodder, old school horror, the funhouse, victor crowley on June 4, 2010 by knifefighter

(This review was originally written in September 2007, during HATCHET’s brief theatrical release before it went quickly to DVD)

MOVIE REVIEW: HATCHET
by L.L. Soares

HATCHET was building up a lot of buzz on the premise that it was a throwback to the horror films of the ‘70s, and me being the silly person I am, I thought this meant suspenseful, brutal, edge-of-your seat filmmaking. But it turns out I was wrong. “Old School American Horror” wasn’t meant to imply the 70s at all in this context. Instead, HATCHET is like the horror films of the ‘80s, especially stuff like FRIDAY THE 13^th PART III (1982) – you know, when slasher films were getting a bad name and were becoming jokes because of all the damn sequels and cliches?