Hi guys,
Been a while since I sent anything into you and I know you’ve reviewed it before but I went to small private screening of Hatchet last night and thought I’d send in my thoughts.
I got the tickets via a competition where I had to say why I thought I deserved them. I pretty much told the truth, said I was sick of Hollywood butchering the classics with terrible remakes, cited the classics of the genre such as Halloween, Texas Chainsaw, Evil Dead and An American Werewolf in London as my favourites and challenged them to get me excited about a horror film again……….and what can I say, I really thought it worked.
The first thing I want to say is what a cool guy the director Adam Green was. Before the movie started up, he told us about the lengths he’d been to get to get the film made in the first place, how he’d been turned down by all the major studio’s because in their words “it wasn’t a remake, based on a Japanese movie and didn’t feature torture”. These are apparently the ingredients Hollywood believes are necessary to make a good movie these days………..f*cktards…….but no surprise to us I guess. But then like he said, if we hate these remakes so much, why do people go to see them, it just encourages more of them to be butchered……
What I want to say about Hatchet is that this movie is fun. Good old fashioned 80’s balls to the wall slasher style fun. It’s not gonna re-write the horror genre and it probably wont make $100 million but its just cool to see a horror movie that harks back to the old school Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Halloween days. Gore, laughter and shameless dismemberment. What more can a horror fan ask for?
The film starts out with a cameo from Robert “Freddy Krueger” Englund who hams its up brilliantly as Louisiana swamp fisherman, its typical Englund really and you can tell he’s having a great time and throwing his weight behind a small independent picture. Later on Tony “Candyman” Todd also pops up for a brief cameo too as some kind of voodoo shop owner, again, its over pretty quick but he chews it up and its fun to see these tip of the hat to the genre moments.
To cut a long story short and try and avoid spoilers, the story centres around a group who go out on a haunted swamp boat tour, fairly standard horror fare really. Of course one by one they get bumped off in various horrific and hilarious ways. The characters are pretty typical for this sort of movie but they are funny and the deaths are savage and imaginative and the guys I watched it with laughed and lapped it up all the way through it.
The killer, Victor Crowley (played by horror stalwart Kane Hodder who actually got knocked out with a spade more than once during filming!) is your typical Jason Vorhees, Freddy Kruger type mass murderers. Horribly burnt and disfigured, Victor is an enjoyable addition to cinema’s classic horror icons and there’s plenty more story to tell.
The film ends bravely and enjoyably, open ended of course and with a lot of unanswered questions if they get to do the sequel.
After the movie ended, Adam Green, the director gave us a chance to ask him loads of questions and gave us lots of back story on the shoot and the movie itself. He told us his plans for the DVD and how it will feature a real behind the scenes mini-movie where he explains how he made such low budget movie made in the first place (the picture only cost $1.5 million to make so he’s done well). He explained how the idea had been in his head since at summer camp as an 8 year old child when he was told about “Hatchet-Head” who would come to get him if he didn’t behave, which, rather than inspire him to do as he was told, got him terrifying the kids around him with the back story he made up.
He would like to do a sequel and has always had a second and third one in mind, however, this is only if the studio let him do it his way without interfering and taking over. There are several things in the movie that are kinda glossed over so that he can go back and give them some depth too, in particular a certain trick or treat rabbit masked child, at least partially responsible for the maniac Victor Crowley’s mental state (can’t say more without ruining the movie) and more on Victor’s father which sounds cool.
Adam also talked about the difficulties he had with the ratings and the MPAA, how he’d had to speak to Eli Roth for advice and how he’d been basically screwed by all their stupid rules (only being allowed to show a shot of someone being stabbed 3 times max, allowing a chainsaw to the face but not someone being impaled on a broom handle!!) etc which was funny and then how the poster showing a hatchet was deemed to be too provocative for a US audiences (instead the new one is kinda similar to the Cabin Fever poster).
After the Q&A Adam signed posters for us all, then took us to a pub round the corner where we had a chance to meet Robert Englund himself (he’s over here to do the London Film and Comicon this weekend) who was a top guy, posing for pictures, signing posters and telling tales about his career.
I’m sure now I’ll get called a plant etc so go ahead but I enjoyed the movie a lot and will go to see when it opens next month. We had a really good night where Adam just wanted to watch it with a small group of fans, who, by all accounts had a good time. The movie is fun more than anything, twisted in places and a good night out, I haven’t laughed at horror this much since Bubba Ho Tep. Awesome entertainment for a night at the movies.
Take care,
Jaythegoodfella……..
