DVD Review: Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet (2009)

"Based loosely on a real legend, Blood Night does a decent job at being a slasher flick, but could have been way better..."

Cast Members of Note- Nate Dushku, Samantha Facchi, Danielle Harris, and Bill Moseley.

Taking a look back to 1978 using the wayback machine, we see a young girl named Mary go bonkers and kill her family with a hatchet, earning her not only the nickname of Mary Hatchet, but a new home in the local sanitarium as well. 10 years later, she escapes from the nuthouse and returns home only to kill a bunch more people and get herself killed in a hail of bullets. that poor girl never had a chance, did she?

Boom, headshot!

The night is dubbed Blood Night, and celebrated by the town every year thereafter. It is said that on Blood Night, Mary Hatchet's ghost roams the streets looking for new victims to add to her tally sheet, especially whores and jerks. The coolest part of the whole deal is that her ghost walks around naked. Dontcha just love cool holidays?

As long as I have a gun or two on me, I'd have no problem celebrating "Naked Nut-job Day."

Flashing forward a bunch of years later, we find a group of dumb kids having their annual Blood Night party, and figure it's a good idea to get drunk and head out to the local cemetery with a Ouija Board to taunt the ghost of poor old Mary Pickaxe. Of course the taunting works and she returns to give them a healthy dose of shut the fuck up... which isn't really a bad thing considering that most of them a d-bags anyhow.

Please die. Thank you.

Can anyone survive Mary Hatchet's ghostly fury? Was Mary raped in the Sanitarium, and does that play a part in her bloody legend? Does Bill Moseley really need the money this bad? I don't know about any of that, but at least we get to see Samantha Facchi naked. Best part of the movie.

Such a pretty murderess.

The good about Blood Night? Boobs and Blood. It's a slasher flick, albeit with a supernatural bent, but it does deliver what a good slasher flick should, and that's nudity and gore. It's a bit cliche' and gets muddled in the middle act, but overall it delivers what a slasher flick is supposed to, even if it could have used a tighter script and a faster pace. It's interesting to note that the movie was based in part on a real Long Island, New York legend. the whole small town dynamic was interesting too, seeing how they treated such horrific events and how so many people made it into a fun thing rather than a remembrance of a grisly night of horror. We loved the visuals in this flick, as some of the kills were pretty neat and Mary creeping around was kind of... creepy. It's not a scare fest by any means, but Mary made a pretty menacing ghost and her time on screen worked well. Too bad there wasn't a bit more of it.

A retro-looking "Ouchie."

Hey, Danielle Harris, get naked, already. That's right, I said it. Sure you got mostly naked in Rob Zombie's Halloween, but you were all covered in blood too, so to those of us who aren't psychopaths, it wasn't truly hot to see. May I suggest that you take a look at my script for Oral Sex Killer Whore: Mouth of Death. In it you would play a whore who goes around killing both men and women with your tongue via oral sex, to compensate for your painful childhood and hatred of groins. It could be a career-maker in the right hands, and I believe that those hands are yours. Make hay while the sun shines Danielle. Call me.

There are so many things I'd like to axe her...

With a fun beginning, and a fun ending (once people start getting bumped off), what happens in the middle is a bunch of... well, nothing. It's almost as if the movie takes a break to have the teen characters party for a while, talk, and accomplish nothing plot-wise, then suddenly it remembers that it's a Horror flick and gets back on track. Hell, at least throw us some gratuitous sex scenes to keep us focused, or some blatant plot device-ish murders or something, but don't just lose focus and meander so aimlessly on us.

Stop smiling and die!

Blood and gore are definitely the main draw of Blood Night. As with most slashers, there's a bunch o' blood in this movie, and some good kills as well.

That is not Strawberry Quik.

The gorgeous Samantha Facchi bares all as the title character, picking up the slack for the prudish Danielle Harris. Seeing her naked alone is worth checking this movie out.

More like Mary Sexy, am I right?

Stay out of graveyards, especially on cursed nights. Also, not all hot, naked chicks are a good thing. Some of them like to kill.

Like her.

Blood Night is what it is; a slasher flick, and nothing more. If you like the whole slasher formula, there's something in this movie that you'll probably enjoy, though it isn't a great flick overall. Watch it for the nudity and kills, but ignore the meandering pace and plot and you should be just fine. I'd rent it before buying it.

C-

Blood Night is available now on DVD and VOD.

I don't know, Mary Hatchet doesn't look so scary to me. Also, Danielle Harris.

 

Review: Flesh, TX (2009)

I should have known better. I should have seen the cool box art, known the movie would be total crap, and passed it up. Of course, I'm a glutton for punishment, and in the interest of saving innocent Horror fans everywhere from the pain, I bit the bullet and watched Flesh, TX.

This is another "Inbred backwoods hillbilly family that kills people and eats them" flick... which is a totally new and fresh idea. Wait, it's not new and fresh, so I'm sure there will at least be some interesting or fresh twist on the tired old formula to keep me interested, right? Nope. Not that either. Why am I watching this again?

She is really hot.

The chick is hot, but everything else about this movie is about as pleasing as having a root canal done on you with a rusty ice pick... by an ill-tempered monkey. (I wanted to say Llama, but with no opposeable thumbs, it just seemed too far-fetched.) There is so much story here that no one will care about, so much talking that does nothing for the movie, and so many cringe-inducing moments in the first 15 minutes alone, that I think a person deserves some sort of prize for sitting through the rest of this steaming prairie pile. A smack in the mouth and a nice "what's wrong with you!" should do nicely.

Do low budget Horror filmmakers even try anymore? Do they all have to try an be clever by giving us cartoonish and "wacky" characters in an attempt to be artistic? I blame Rob Zombie for this, because ever since Devil's Rejects, Horror filmmakers seem hell-bent on trying to create their own Otis, Capt. Spaulding or Baby, and 99.9% of the time they fail and end up giving us a painful parody rather than off-kilter or interesting characters.

Painful like this.

Which brings me to my next point; I can't remember the last time I saw a movie this poorly acted. Aside from Kathleen Benner, who shows some promise despite the fact that she had nothing to work with script or dialogue wise, I think everyone else in this movie was just recruited at the bus stop, and told to act. The script definitely made it worse, but the actors just didn't have it in them to rise above it, or even make it back to par. It's always sad to see Joe Estevez (you know Martin Sheen's brother, Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez's uncle) even doing this kind of tripe. He's no master thespian by a long shot, but come on, his brother is Martin Sheen! He has nothing more in him than this? Even Charlie doesn't suck this bad anymore, and he hasn't been relevant since what... Major League 2?

Flesh, TX is mostly full of dialogue and character development scenes that we can't care about, and when the blood does flow, it looks like runny pink Karo Syrup and kinda sucks. If you're gonna do it on the cheap, and with limited talent, at least pack it to the rafters with the bloody stuff. I could go on and on, but you get the point by now I'm sure. There was at least one thing, and one thing only in and about this movie that was good, and if you look closely in the following pictures, you should be able to figure out what it is. Look close!:


If you guessed "scenic locations/set design," that's not really right, but we will accept that answer. We will also accept "The slutty hot chick in the whore get-up" as well. There is nothing left to say on this matter.

Kathleen Benner is alright with us.

Review: Vertige (2010)

When I first saw the trailer for Vertige, I don't know why, but I somehow got it in my head that it would be like The Descent but on a mountaintop. I could swear I remember them getting to the top of an isolated mountain and finding some Descent-like creatures waiting for them, and having to fend them off. They so could have called it The Ascent to be clever... 

Anywho, I was wrong. Vertige (The Ascent) was about a group of smarmy French kids who drive to Croatia to climb a dangerous mountain, because they're idiots. Of course they can't just climb, have a laugh and go home... no. They have to enter the Forbidden Zone and take the climbing trail which was "closed for repairs," which of course lands them in all sorts of trouble, mostly involving some Mutoid Croatian Mountain Cannibal-guy, and of course, gravity. Murder ensues.

This movie had some stunning photography.

The first half of this movie was breathtaking, showing us all sorts of death-defying mountain climbing in a gorgeous locale, all with perfect scenery. Where the movie loses it, aside from the characters being morons, is once the "killer" shows up and starts picking them off, one by one. It has all been done before, and better, and just felt a bit uninspired. The killer himself looked a little too plain, which I guess is more realistic plot-wise, but it kinda sucked. There was some decent gore towards the end, but the best part of the movie was really everything to do with the climbing itself.

Gorgeousness and beautifulosity.

It wasn't bad, but I'm not sure I'd make the stretch and call it good. If you like the average Backwoods Cannibal stalk-n-slash flick, then you will most likely dig this movie. If you get tired of the same old thing, skip it. I also think that anyone who truly loves mountain climbing would loves this movie, especially in the early going. 

The first half of the movie and it's grand visuals, A
The second half of the movie and it's trite, overdone storyline, C- 

In parting, I have to say that Fanny Valette is pretty hot, aside from her name being Fanny. It would be perfect though, if her name was Fanny Melons. That's funny because she has a nice butt and boobs.