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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - September 7th

"HATCHET" released in 2007

Welcome to Honey Island Swamp. You'll be chaperoned by your own, only slightly incompetent, "haunted swamp" tour guide Shawn (Parry Shen), who'll share with you all the sights and stories of the bayou - exotic animals (aka man-eating alligators), historic homes, fill you in the local culture and history - with only a slim 90.9% chance of being brutally murdered by a psychotic, disfigured, swamp hermit Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder), in Adam Green's indie horror hit, Hatchet. All aboard!

Watch the Hatchet trailer below!

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During Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, a group of friends including Ben (Joel David Moore) and his best friend Marcus (Deon Richmond) decide to go on a haunted swamp tour, only be told proprietor Rev. Zombie (Tony Todd) that his business is closed (pending the outcome of a negligence lawsuit), and refers the group a guided-tour down the street, owned by the over-the-top, inexperienced tour guide Shawn (Shen). Ben and Marcus join the other tourists; porn star/"actresses" Misty and Jenna (Mercedes McNab and Joleigh Fioreavanti), their sleazy director Doug Shapiro (Joel Murray), Midwestern married couple, Jim and Shannon Permatteo (Richard Riehle and Patrika Darbo), and the mysterious, and hot tempered, Marybeth (Tamara Feldman) - who has own agenda for going into the swamp. Despite being warned by a local swamp-dweller Jack Cracker (legendary make-up effects artist John Carl Buechler), Shawn leads them through the swampland's, but runs the boat onto a submerged rock, causing the boat to sink. While wading to shore, Jim is bitten by an alligator, which is quickly shoot dead by Marybeth. As they walks through the woods, they encounter the shabby Crowley house, and Marybeth shares the legend of Victor Crowley - a young Victor (Rileah Vanderbilt) was a deformed child with a rare disease, bullied by other kids and was kept hidden by his father, Thomas Crowley (Kane Hodder). One night a group of mean teenagers stumbled across the house and threw fireworks at it to scare Victor, causing the house to catch on fire. When Thomas returned, the teens to flee, but Victor is seemingly killed when Thomas accidentally hit him in the face with a hatchet while trying to break down the door. Marybeth claims that Victor roams the swamp at night, concluding that they are not safe in the woods, which is why she brought the gun with her to search for her missing father Sampson (Robert Englund) and brother Ainsley (Joshua Leonard). Unbeknownst to Marybeth, her father and brother have already been murdered by a very real Victor Crowley (also Kane Hodder), who quickly ambushes the group as they approach his swamp shack, immediately killing Jim and Shannon. Although Marybeth shoots Victor, the bullets have little effect stopping him and the remaining survivors barricade themselves inside Crowley's house. Stalked by an insane and unstoppable killing-machine, Marybeth and Ben desperately try to come up with a plan to end Victor Crowley before they too meet a grisly fate at Honey Island Swamp!

[famously repeated line in the Hatchet series]
Ben: You gotta be fucking kidding me!

Top and Above:   The remaining survivors watch in horror as Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder) takes one of his first victims in spectacular style!

Writer/director Adam Green first wrote Hatchet while working a variety of odd jobs in Hollywood (including as a DJ at the Rainbow Bar & Grill) while looking for a distributor for his debut feature film, a semi-biographical comedy Coffee & Donuts. Finally in 2003, Touchstone Pictures bought Coffee & Donuts (intending to remake the film into a sitcom for UPN) and Green moved forward with Hatchet with first time producers Scott Altomare and Cory Neal, and executive producer Andrew Mysko. Raising an (estimated) $1.5 million budget, the cast included a mix of younger horror actors and newcomers - Tamara Feldman (TV's Smallville, where she played a villainess werewolf), Deon Richmond (Scream 3), Mercedes McNab (TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Perry Shen (Shrieker and Dead Scared), with Joel David Moore (who would later star in Avatar) and Joleigh Fioreavanti - with veteran genre stars (and more than a few horror icons!), including; Robert Englund (the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise), Tony Todd (Candyman), Joshua Leonard (The Blair Witch Project), and the awesome Kane Hodder (the Friday the 13th series) in dual roles of Thomas Crowley, as well as his deformed son Victor. Patrika Darbo, Richard Riehle, and Joel Murray rounding out the remaining cast.

To keep the set hidden, Hatchet was called "Love Rodeo" during filming, and would be the last production to shoot in Lousiana before Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005. With Green imposing a strict "no CGI" rule, he selected veteran make-up effects artist John Carl Buechler to oversee Victor Crowley's grisly prosthetic design, as well as design the truly impressive (and bloody!) effects for the films 11 death scenes. In fact, the only CGI to be used in post production was for the removal of wires and camera set-ups - everything else was amazingly shot for real! Keeping with this rule, when a scene called for actor Joel David Moore to vomit, Green did not want the actors spitting out fake vomit like most movies do, so Moore managed to throw up on his own for the first take, but would be supplied with a mixture of cold clam chowder and orange juice for the second take. Appearing as the younger horribly deformed Victor Crowley was actress Rileah Vanderbilt. During initial make-up tests, John Carl Buechler needed a model to test the latex prosthetic on and Vanderbilt was the volunteer. Since the FX had already been molded to her face for the test shots, Vanderbilt played the role in the film. Incidentally, Vanderbilt would also appear in subsequent the subsequent Hatchet films, reprising the role of young Victor Crowley for Hatchet II and as one armed SWAT team member Dougherty for Hatchet III.

Shawn: The tour is leaving right now, it's forty bones each.
Ben: Forty dollars?
Marcus: Can you spot me?
Ben: What, you don't have any cash?
Marcus: No, I'm just not paying for this bullshit.

Top and Above:   Two legendary cameos; Robert Englund as Sampson Dunston and Tony Todd as Reverand Zombie!

Hatchet premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, and would spend almost the next year and a half touring the festival circuit, with screenings at the London FrightFest Film Festival at The Odeon West End and the Sitges International Film Festival in Spain, and was selected for Germany's Fantasy Film Festival which toured in Munich, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Bochum, Hamburg and Berlin. Hatchet would also win the audience award for "Best Picture" and  jury prize for "Best Special Effects" at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, where Kane Hodder also won the jury prize for "Best Actor". Both the original screenings in Austin were sold out which resulted in extra folding chairs having to be set up in the theater (with even more audience members sitting in the aisles!). Finally, Hatchet received a limited theatrical release on September 7th, and was released on DVD three months later, reportedly making $6 million in U.S. rentals during its first three weeks of release. Overall, Hatchet sold over 597,022 units in North America, translating into $8,262,721. Not bad considering it grossed only a little over $200,000 at the box office during its 2-week theatrical run.

Generally receiving mixed reviews from critics, with Marc Savlov from the Austin Chronicle giving the film 3 1/2 out of 5 stars, praising the film's "quippy dialogue", orchestral score, and gore effects, and Bloody Disgusting praising the film's 80's slasher film style, calling it "A bloody great ride". On the other hand, Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian awarded the film 2 out of 5 stars calling the film, "A reasonably serviceable horror [film]" and the Rotten Tomatoes critic concensus stating, "The over-the-top gore, campy acting, and dim cinematography may be part of Hatchet's self-described old-school ethos, but irony alone can't sustain a horror film."

TRIVIA:   During the cemetery scene, on the tombstones we see the names Sarah Elbert and Cory Neal (both producers on Hatchet) and there is a crypt with the name 'GREEN' written over the entrance, as a reference to the films director Adam Green.

Top and Above:   Writer/director Adam Green

In November 2008, Anchor Bay Entertainment released a teaser poster for a sequel, Hatchet II, which Green would also return to write and direct after finishing filming his next horror picture Frozen (2010). Kane Hodder would also returned as Victor Crowley/Mr. Crowley, with Tony Todd reprising his role as Reverend Zombie, and John Carl Buechler as Jack Cracker. Tamara Feldman would, however, not return for the sequels, and was replaced in the role of heroine Marybeth Dunston by another horror film veteran Danielle Harris (Halloween 4 & 5, Urban Legend, Left for Dead, and remakes Halloween 1 and 2). Like it's predecessor, Hatchet II (2010) also had a limited theatrical release (but was pulled from theaters in Toronto and Montreal as it was not rated by the cities' provincial rating agencies) before finding again success in the DVD and BluRay markets. Hatchet III would follow three years later in 2013, but would be the first film in the series to not be directed by Adam Green - but Green would still write, produce, present, and retain creative control by having final cut over the film - hand-picking cameraman BJ McDonnell to replace him as director. Hatchet III would be the last film in the series to date. Interestingly though, if you were to watch all three Hatchet films back-to-back, without opening and end credits, it would be one uninterrupted storyline, revolving around a few days. Just be sure to ignore how Marybeth goes from looking like Tamara Feldman in the first film, to Danielle Harris for the last two!

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   49%

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