HATCHET II is at least more fun than HATCHET I. Both are maybe too tongue-in-cheek, but at least they’re kind of slasher throwbacks, nothing meta-y or postmodernish or self-reflexable about them, and I appreciate that. They got Kane Hodder from FRIDAY THE 13TH parts whatever playing Victor Crowley, a Madman Marz-type ghost-of-a-murdered-deformed-guy chopping up trespassers in a Louisiana swamp. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Kane Hodder’
Hatchet II
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
Steel Frontier
Monday, November 29th, 2010
The Steel Frontier is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, alot like the place in ROAD WARRIOR, but filmed in California. It’s the kind of place where you might find a legless man out in the middle of the desert and have to put the poor guy out of his misery. Or you might find a small town where everybody acts kind of like they’re in a western, and a bunch of asshole bullies on motorcycles and souped up post-apocalypse-mobiles might drive into town and start fucking shit up and laughing about it.
That’s exactly what happens here, this guy General Quantrell (Brion James) rolls in with his “desert scum,” goes into the barber shop and gets a nice warm shave while his boys terrorize the place. (more…)
Hatchet
Friday, September 28th, 2007Well, I guess now it’s officially a pattern. The pattern goes like this:
- small independent horror movie plays a few small film festivals.
- People on the internet go ape shit because they got to see it first.
- Buzz spreads for a year or so.
- Anchor Bay (#1 releaser of horror movies in the VHS days) buys rights, gives tiny theatrical release.
- I see it on DVD.
- god damn it, why don’t they make good ones anymore
This pattern started with BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON and fortunately this one is not as asinine as that one. It’s not terrible, but it doesn’t cut the mustard. Believe me, I wish it did. I see mustard everywhere and I want nothing more than for that mustard to be cut by a movie like this. But just being above the standards of the DTV giant snake movies is not a horror resurgence.
I had hopes for HATCHET because unlike BEHIND THE MASK there’s nothing postmodern or meta about it. It’s just a straightup slasher movie about a big, unkillable freak chopping people up in the Louisiana swamp. His name is Victor Crowley and he’s played by Kane Hodder, who played Jason in some of the later FRIDAY THE 13ths. Victor has a backstory kind of like Jason meets the guy in THE BURNING: he was a deformed freak who kids treated bad, then his dad (also Kane Hodder) hit him in the face with a hatchet and also I think he was set on fire or something, I forget. (more…)
Jason X
Saturday, January 1st, 2005JASON X is the future of slasher franchises left over from the ’80s, and not just because it’s about Jason Voorhees being frozen and defrosted in outer space 450 years later. No, this is the future because it finally figured out a good approach to keeping these stupid characters going. This isn’t trying to update things by infusing the same old crap with last month’s stale gimmicks. See for example the upcoming Blair Witch/webcast Halloween picture you see advertised before JASON X (although I do like seeing Buster Rhymes say “Trick or treat motherfucker!” – wouldn’t he make a better Dolemite than LL Cool J?)
No, this one works because it works as a genuine dumb slasher movie, as a parody of one, and as some weird pop culture accident where a familiar series got thrown into the wrong genre unexpectedly. It’s a more consistent attempt at the BRIDE OF CHUCKY approach to modern slasher sequels. Take the character and cliches from the earlier sequels, put them in a way more ludicrous situation (and it really is WAY more ludicrous in this case) and have fun.
Of course the look of JASON X is much cheesier than BRIDE OF CHUCKY because it doesn’t have oscar winning cinematographer Peter Pau. But it does have a few good digital effects (mostly in the opening credits sequence which takes place inside Jason). I heard a rumor that it was shot on the same digital cameras used for VIDOCQ 1 and STAR TREK 2 and EL MARIACHI 3, but if it was you couldn’t tell by looking at it. All you could tell was that it was shot in Canada.
In the earlier Jason pictures, I think the filmatists were taking things more seriously than the audience. I know there are a couple of nutballs out there who enjoy these movies straight up but clearly the vast majority of people who go to see them go in and laugh at the fancy new tools Jason manages to find laying around somewhere and use for mutilation. The filmatists may or may not have been aware of this fact but if they were they never let on, treating the situations like the audience might actually be scared by them. (more…)
