Verdict
Summary
Available exclusively at the Dark Sky Selects webstore, this set collects all four Hatchets for the first time in a sturdy steelbook case. Part III is the best of the bunch, and the set includes a brand new bonus disc for fans.
Hatchet (2006) Plot:
A night swamp tour turns deadly when an urban legend comes to life.
Review:
Two buddies – Ben (Joel David Moore) and Marcus (Deon Richmond) – looking for a good time in the bayou book a sketchy night tour through the swamps, not realizing that the lame urban legend story of a mongoloid man named Victor Crowley – a.k.a. Hatchetface – is about to come true for them in grisly, vivid detail. When the swamp river boat breaks down, forcing the handful of tourists – including a middle aged couple, a skeezy porn producer and his two bimbo performers, and a single woman named Marybeth (Tamara Feldman) with a secret – to get off and start walking through the swamps to try to get back to civilization. But there’s not just the alligators lurking in the swamps, no, there’s the actual Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder under a mountain of makeup) out there, hunting them. When Crowley reveals himself, he wastes no time at all in dismembering, decapitating, disemboweling, and crushing, twisting, and smashing them to dead meat. As their numbers dwindle, Marybeth reveals herself to have some kind of connection to the Crowley urban legend.
I remember seeing Hatchet in a theater when it was first released because the hype was loud and insistent that its director Adam Green was the new name for horror. When I saw it then – and when I see it now – it’s clear that the movie is earnest, but it’s too garish and over the top with a silly tone totally bereft of suspense or dread, and when the gore starts happening, the set piece kills call attention to themselves for the sake of being the real reason why the movie seems to exist in the first place. Personally, I don’t watch and enjoy horror movies just for the kills or the elaborate makeup effects. That stuff is just the icing on the cake, and if the movie in which the gore scenes are built upon don’t evenly match the plot, the characters, the humor, or the overall sense of style and direction, then the movie fails. That’s where’s Adam Green’s Hatchet sits, unfortunately. It wants so desperately to sit with the best and the coolest, but it’s still a geek and belongs with the geeks.
Hatchet II (2010) Plot:
The final girl from part 1 brings along a bunch of hunters to try to trap Crowley, leading to horrific results.
Review:
Marybeth (a recast Danielle Harris) barely survives, making it back to civilization where she meets up with a snake oil voodoo priest named Reverend Zombie (Tony Todd who had a bit in the first one), who is intrigued by her tale of survival. Zombie recruits a small team of swamp hunters to go into the swamps to try to either kill or trap the ultimate urban legend in Victor Crowley – a.k.a. Hatchetface (played again by Kane Hodder) – who is likely still living somewhere in the deepest and darkest area of the swamp. Marybeth’s uncle (played by horror filmmaker Tom Holland) comes along to try to keep her safe, but no one is safe now that they’ve all entered Crowley’s territory. Sure enough, the mongoloid killer shows up, dispatching everyone in cruel and horrific ways. Once again, only Marybeth will survive the ordeal, only this time she might have ended Crowley once and for all.
Even more in-your-face and wildly over the top than the first film, Hatchet II (which I also saw theatrically) is exactly the sequel you’d expect from Adam Green, who had the gall to put his name above the title when it comes on screen. With an up-the-ante gore quotient that obliterates everyone on screen in elaborate practical makeup effects set-ups, the movie has a loud, unpleasant vibe this time around, seeming to not realize how ridiculous it all is, though some of the kills are supposed to be funny but just end up being awkward and off-putting. Harris wears her character’s weariness and anguish pretty well, and while the movie splatters her with tons of gore, she somehow manages to keep herself classy.
Hatchet III (2013) Plot:
Escaping and surviving the horrific slaughter (twice) of Victor Crowley, Marybeth returns for one more round to settle it once and for all.
Review:
After demolishing the hulking Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder), Marybeth (Danielle Harris) makes it back to civilization again, but instead of being lauded or praised for her accomplishment, she’s locked up in jail, cleaned up, and blamed for the deaths and disappearances of the previous two groups she was with over the last few days. The sheriff (Zach Galligan) drags her back to the swamp with a bunch of deputies and a small team of SWAT guys to prove her story wrong, but instead they run into a completely resurrected and healed Crowley, who seems unstoppable and able to rejuvenate himself in no time at all. Concurrently, an intrepid journalist desperate for a story to make a name for herself figures out how to kill Crowley for good, but it entails stealing an urn that holds the ashes of Crowley’s father … and making sure that Marybeth is the one to deliver the final blow.
The best of the four-film series, Hatchet III from director BJ McDonnell and writer / producer Adam Green is a much more streamlined slasher with a plot I could get into and while it occasionally has a few funny moments, it’s not nearly as tongue in cheek, although there are plenty of kills that only leave the tongue in cheek, if you catch my drift. Harris is an excellent “final girl” this time around, and the movie has fun by giving us cameos by the usual stable of horror favorites, including Sid Haig in one memorable scene. If the series had ended here, it would’ve gone out on a high note.
Victor Crowley (2017) Plot:
10 years later, a film crew sets out to film a slasher on Victor Crowley’s homestead: Big mistake.
Review:
Andrew (Parry Shen), the only survivor of the previous Victor Crowley slaughters, has written a tell-all memoir that is met with controversy, but a small team of independent exploitation filmmakers hires him to lead them to Crowley’s swamp and walk them through the horrific events from 10 years ago so that they can get in step and make a “faithful” adaptation horror film. Turns out that no matter the fact that Crowley was defeated before, he will return to life once ever 10 years, and it’s just bad luck for the film crew when they walk right into Crowley’s clutches as he has awoken for the night.
A totally unnecessary “why not?” sequel, Victor Crowley, from director Adam Green, returns to the silly humor and uneven tone that defined his previous two entries in the series. It goes from funny to totally gross and off-putting, and then tries being funny again, but he never knows where to settle his tone. The kills are just as spectacularly over the top as usual, but the movie spends a lot of time on an airplane that crashes in the swamp, taking up much of the short running time (it’s only 83 minutes) on characters who are literally stuck in the plane as it begins to submerge in the water. Poor Tiffany Shepis (who’s great in some Rolfe Kanefsky flicks) has absolutely nothing to do in the movie but drown slowly in a prolonged scene that left me feeling weird because it was pointless. Goofy, desperate for a cash-in, and not nearly as cool as part III, this entry really ruins an already unstable horror franchise by ending it on such a poor note.
Dark Sky Selects collects all four Hatchet movies in a sturdy steelbook collection by including all four original discs with all the original special features included, as well as including a brand new bonus disc with an hour-long sit down chat (filmed in October 2023) with Adam Green, his cinematographer, and his producer, as they reflect on all the “swamp tales,” as they call them, about the making of all four films. It’s a fun little feature, and the disc also comes with the original production journals. Priced at $70.00, this set is exclusive to Dark Sky’s webstore. Available here: https://selects.darkskyfilms.com/
