Customer Reviews

Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

In recent years, the horror genre has been plagued by more duds than gems. For every decent slasher film, there are scores of movies that barely deserve a second glance, much less a full viewing.

The reason for this is a conflict of interests that rarely compromise with each other. On one end, we have low budgeted movies that try to bring us back to the golden age of horror(circa the 1970s and 1980s) with their gritty kill-shots, fountains of blood, and enough bare breasts to make Hugh Hefner blush. On the other end we have high-gloss production houses putting out cookie-cutter horror stories, many with the dreaded PG-13 stamp.

With the release of Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet, we are given the best of both worlds; a movie made by fans(in horror afficionado/director Frank Sabatella), for fans, and with a dynamic production value to capture the guts, glory, and breasts, of the film for a stellar visual effect.

The story is as follows: A young girl named Mary Mattock(played by Patricia Raven) butchers her family for no apparent reason. We later learn that this is due to a physiological problem called Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder which makes PMS look like a walk in the park. The young woman(now played by Samantha Facchi) is sent to the King's Park Psychiatric Hospital, where she is raped by a hospital night-guard. She becomes pregnant, but loses the baby in child-birth. This brings on another intense bout of MDD in which she slaughters what seems to be all staff and patients at the hospital, and is gunned down by police.

The story brings us to the present, where high school kids celebrate that night of butchery by calling it Blood Night, and proceeding to paint the town red in a night of vandalism and excessive partying. The movie focuses on one group of kids, who decide to visit Mary Mattock, or as she is now known as Mary Hatchet, at her grave, and unknowingly release the ghost to wreck vengeance once again. One by one, the group is dispatched in various, high impact slaughterings, as they try to lay the spirit to rest.

Sounds simple? It's not, but who am I to ruin it for you?

This movie lacks in nothing for entertainment. The kill-shots are highly detailed, thanks to the superb special effects of Monster in My Closet special effects artist Jeremy Selenfriend and Harrington Talents virtual effects artist John Morena. Dismemberments, spinal readjustments, and blood washes all become intensely realistic by utilizing Selenfriend's definitive prop functions, from custom sculpted heads(and brains) to mouth interiors. To make sure these effects lack nothing on-screen, Morena utilized digital enhancements to help make the kill-shots pop off the screen with the addition of blood enhancements that were shot seperately, and then transcribed into the final edit. With these talented artists and the fantastic camera-work, the film popped off the screen, much to the glee of fans of gore.

There is humor interlaced into the horror, as well. Graveyard Gus(played by Bill Moseley) is nothing short of the drunken graveyard-keeper who drinks way too much whiskey and yaps about Vietnam. A conversation about Tom Jones between Alex(played by Nate Dushku) and Chris(played by Anthony Marks) had me giggling out loud. A male virgin wiping his brow with a pink, "Princess" pillow while getting frisky with a hot chick? This movie has it. The comedy is just enough to help the viewer fall into the comfort trap before being shown a decapitated head flying across a room. By balancing these bits of comedy into the horror, the bar of suspense is raised, because you never become too jaded by seeing an overflow of gore. Not that either way would be bad, but for Blood Night, comic relief makes the suspense grow. And lets not forget Eric(played by Billy Magnussen), who is the pinnacle of every sex-crazed high school guy we've ever known.

What's amazing is that all of these actors and actresses are able to turn their clown routines off when director Frank Sabatella calls for it, with great results of suspense. Let us not forget that scream-princess Danielle Harris, playing her part impeccably in the storyline as the knee-socked Alyssa, who can never seem to hold her liquor and brings back some intense stories of her time in school.

So what defines this movie beyond all others? High production, an extremely gifted cast, and intense kill-shots, all embedded into a suspenseful story-line where even if you think you know what is going on, you really don't. At the same time it's just good, head-jerking fun, a horror movie with serious overtones, but doesn't take itself too seriously. Think Wes Craven's Scream meets Lucio Fulci's The House By the Cemetary, and out of that seemingly scandalous affair comes its offspring, Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet.

Blood Night "The Legend Of Mary Hatchet"

This movie starts off full speed ahead with a flashback of young Mary murdering her family in their home, action and gore galore.

Flash to the mental institution some years later where Mary is being held because she cant stand trial due to reasons of insanity.

Enter a fat gross mental ward worker who is taunting Mary asking her if she wants to "in his words" Goo Goo Gaa Gaa his Loli Pop..
She is raped and a child is conceived.

The staff informs Mary that her child died during childbirth after that Mary breaks loose and kills the staff ,after the carnage she is standing out front of the institution holding the severed head of the man who raped her ,is gunned down and killed by the police.

Now flash to what they call Blood night where teenagers celebrate the night that Mary killed her family.

You have a bunch of obnoxious teens talking about their penises ,getting laid and terrorizing people with eggs,tampons dipped in red paint and other delightful gifts.The parts that are suppose to be funny actually are ..There is a lot of female flesh for the guys to drool over and that adds to the retro feel.

The middle slows down quite a bit and I got a little disinterested but it picks back up again when Graveyard Gus played by "Bill Moseley" of The Devils Rejects and House of 1000 Corpses fame shows up and takes the remaining teens to the mental institution to reunite Mary with her dead baby because he was the one who knows where the box like coffin was buried. There is a twist but I saw it coming a mile away as for the gore it's pretty old school and over the top..Danielle Harris of Halloween franchise fame has quite an interesting role in this movie as well.

Some of the gore is well done some of it not done so well.As a slasher lover not affiliated with the film in any way I would say give it a watch It's pretty good.."The piano in the soundtrack sounded a bit like a rip off of Adam Greens Hatchet,but that's just my opinion.

It won't make my top 10 of the year but it's worth being in my collection and I'm sure I will pull it out again one night and watch it again..

I got a chance to go to the screening of the film last year and it was a blast!! It reminded me of the old horror 'scream' flicks of the 70s and 80s, with all of the terror and guts, plus more fun and games! There is nothing held back and the audience is kept hanging on to their seats, plus the music was pretty damn creepy. I can't wait to see it again.

If you follow my reviews you know I'm a pretty big horror movie fan. So for me the thing that drew me into this movie was the fact that Bill Moseley & Danielle Harris were in it. But really that's all this movie has going for it. I figured if those two were in it, chances were the movie had a higher budget then those low budget "school project" films. But I was wrong.

This movie has bad writing, bad acting, plot holes, and loaded with filler. Overall it just isn't that great. If you'd like a more indepth review of this movie please visit my horror movie/book review blog listed in my profile.

The slasher genre has become one of horror's most abused formats. BLOOD NIGHT is a prime example. Lazy and inept, the movie uses a lengthy middle portion to focus on the obnoxious teens soft porn celebration of the titular "holiday." None of the characters are given any real identities and the actors left 17 years before. The menstrual connection is hilariously vulgar and the excessive gore merely repugnant. Goof alert: When Mary Hatchet kills her parents, it's supposed to be in 1972 and newspaper headlines say Mary was 12 yrs old. In the present, her tombstone gives her date of birth as 1967 which made her 5 and definitely pre-menstrual.
The addition of horror "stars" Bill Moseley and Danielle Harris does nothing to elevate the acting and the remaining cast is to be kind-------terrible.
BLOOD NIGHT doesn't succeed as campy fun or goose flesh horror. There's really nothing to recommend this disaster!

And who doesn't love a good slasher flic?... If your still reading this review then you like myself have had the fortunate(or unfortunate)pleasure of viewing many good, bad & great examples of this sub-genre. We all have different opinions and appreciate different flavors, but we who enjoy this kind of film mostly have common expectations or similar standards when it comes to what makes a keeper. My favorite kind of slasher films are the ones that succeed in keeping you scared and on the edge of your seat until the credits role, but unfortunately they dont make those kind as often as I'd like. My second favorite kind are far more common and these are the ones that are fun, silly & sexy with a hint of fear and a healthy dose of blood & gore. Blood Night: the Legend of Mary Hatchet falls perfectly into this second catagory. While the film is easily more predictable & fun than it is scary it does at times muster up some creepy atmosphere and the acting is above average in some areas wich helps the movie along in its slower moments. What I enjoyed most though were the spurts of colorful direction and visual shout outs to old school film making. Highly recommended if your a fan of this stuff!

Yep nude, all the way through the movie, nude, nude, nude. The story is a bit weak, and of course you figure out who the killer is near the beginning, but there is enough skin for those that get bored waiting for the next kill. Thank the movie Gods, they didn't take themselves too serious and had a little fun with it. I would have preferred if they would have made it a nude killer ghost story, but we can't have it all, right. This one is worth having in your collection just in case they make a part two.

I love slasher movies but this one was horrible. The worst part was that there was not one sympathetic character. The kids are the most obnoxuos foul mouthed punks I've ever seen in a slasher and the plot was idiotic.
Skip this big time.

I took a chance with this film. I had not heard of it before and you cannot get it here in Australia so I decided to give it a go as per the decent reviews and hope it was worth my money. Will I watch it again? For Sure! Am I happy I purchased it? Absolutely!

This one is about a town that is still celebrating the deaths of many one night, 20 years ago when Mary Hatchett (Who has a rare psychosis condition where when she menstuates, she becomes unstable and homocidal) went loose on her parents and then on the local mental asylum that locked her up. After her murderous rampage she was shot down and the town lives her story like their own 'Halloween' celebrating it once a year and running around with Mary masks etc. Then one year, it all starts again. A group of teenagers are harrassed by a killer that show the same MO as Mary but Mary is dead.... or is she?

This one has loads of cheesy 80's moments. It is like watching an old 80's slasher thats been 90'd up! And look, it works. You got some good scares, some good kills, some creepy moments. Not huge on the character development but not necessarily bad either. It honestly is an entertaining little flick and I am glad I got it and I did enjoy it.

Its a must for all horror fans, its a pass for those that arent. 3.5/5.

Personally, I thought this movie was just ok. I'm not too much of a stickler for how realistic effects look in horror movies unless they look absolutely terrible, so I dont have too much to complain about as far as that goes. However I am very picky about the pacing in horror movies, and that is one of my problems with this movie. It pulls you in right at the beginning and then spends the next 45 minutes setting up a story that ultimately drags the movie to what feels like a complete standstill before it picks back up again. Also, the "twist" near the end of the movie is one you can see coming from a mile away. I feel that they could have done a much better job misdirecting the viewer so the twist had a much better payoff when it came down to it. In the end though, my biggest problem with this movie is the "Too gory for theaters" and taglines like that. If you build your movie up to be a non-stop splatterfest and one of the goriest movies to date you damn sure better back it up, but Blood Night does not. Not to say it isnt a gory movie, but this would be a straight up "R" rating by the MPAA, not even a hard "R". All this being said however, Blood Night isn't a bad movie at all, I think I just bought into the marketing campaign and some of the "planted" reviews as another reviewer put it and ended up a little disappointed. Starring horror vet Bill Moseley(Devil's Rejects, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) and Danielle Harris(4 of the Halloween movies,) and an ample supply of T & A, Blood Night is a middle of the road horror movie trying to recapture the feel of the 80's slasher flick. While I must give credit for not being a remake, I think things could have been done a little better. Hopefully the director learns from some of the problems with this movie, I really would like to see what he could do with a bigger budget and a little more experience. I would give Blood Night 2.5 stars out of 5. Apparently you can only order this through amazon or directly from the film's official website, and as long as they are charging 15 to 20 bucks, i'd keep my money. But if you can grab a copy for 5 or 10 bucks, give it a shot.