Screenhead

Old school American horror!  Yes sir!  Say it with reverent pride, folks, because that’s where the entire horror industry came from.  Oh, sure, you can point to the Ozploitation movement or the literary horror of Asia and Europe, but when it comes to the horror movie—specifically the splatter flick—it got its start in America.

And it’s come under more than its share of fire, too.  It’s been reviled and censored and banned and declared a threat to the very moral fiber of America.  That’s just the problems without—it’s even had problems within as it’s been tinkered with and remastered and reimagined and stretched and damaged almost beyond recognition.  That’s where Adam Green came in, bringing along Hatchet, a movie that proves that sometimes the old ways are still the best, especially when used in concert with modern skill and technology.

The plot is standard slasher fare—Ben and his friend Marcus have come down to New Orleans at the height of Mardi Gras for all the standard reasons—booze, babes and barfing–but also to help Ben get over the recent loss of his girlfriend of fully eight years.  In an effort to help himself forget, Ben books the duo on a “haunted swamp tour”, to which Marcus rebels because it involves neither booze nor babes in any significant quantity, and possibly more barfing than the ordinary.

The tour they end up on is a shoddy operation run by an even shoddier operator, and once the tour group finally comes together and launches, they run afoul of mechanical problems, and eventually, even the legend of Victor Crowley, who isn’t as much of a legend as people had hoped.

No, he’s quite real…and quite active.

That’s a classic setup right there, and indeed, Hatchet really does look like those old slasher flicks we’ve come to know and in some cases love.  If it looks a lot like Friday the 13th to you, well, it probably should.  Most especially because playing Victor Crowley is none other than the very best iteration of Jason Voorhees to date—Kane Hodder.

It’s easy for me to recommend Hatchet to you, mostly because this is easily one of the best examples of American horror cinema I can think of.  But by like token, it will use so many of the standard clichés—mostly because it’s actively engaged in celebrating them—that it’ll look like a movie you’ve seen hundreds of times before.  Thus, its interest is really somewhat limited.  If you’re not a horror buff already then you will actively resent Hatchet as being more of the same.

If you’re not familiar with the clichés, then you won’t be able to fully appreciate how well they’re put together.  There were even some troubles wrangling an R rating out of the MPAA, so you’ll want to see the unrated director’s cut to see the whole thing.  Don’t worry if you only can get the R rated version—it’s just not quite so complete.

As an aside, it really makes me wonder how long the MPAA can remain a viable force, when their attempts at censorship are rendered moot the second the DVD hits store shelves.

But anyway—if you’re a horror fan, if you’re a horror buff, if you understand just what “Old School American Horror” really means then you will be patently enamored with Hatchet.  If you enjoy horror movies of any stripe you should get some enjoyment out of it.  But you’ll have to be into it at least a little bit to get ANYTHING out of this.

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