There have been many sub-genres of the slasher movie throughout the ages. From the madman next door to the campfire tales of the local psychopath, slashers have popped up in various forms throughout the ages. One of the least successful, surprisingly enough, is the variation on the Jack the Ripper theme. While there have been good examples of this( "From Hell", "Jack's Back", "Out of the Dark" to an extent. and yes a couple of guilty pleasures for me "Fear City" and "Edge of Sanity")most films portraying a psychopath stalking a stripper/prostitute have not been able to combine the necessary exploitation elements successfully. "Hatchetman" personifies this trend in all of it's failures.
Managing to be both dull and inept, "Hatchetman" is one of the worst examples of this sub-genre! It's your standard psychopath stalks strippers movie, only done with a lack of suspense and talent. Stultifyingly bad in almost every department, this movie is poorly acted and limply written, with all the clichés present. The mystery is so simplistic that you figure out the identity of the murderer five seconds after you first meet him. And, as is required for this type of film, all characters act like complete, blithering idiots. In fact both the writers and the actors seem to have no sense of character development or motivation. All of the situations that should seem normal to each individual character, feel false. Even the dialogue feels forced.Which leads me to ask this question. Why do conversations in movies like this always feel as if they would never happen in the real world? Is there no writer competent enough to make these characters sound and act like normal, intelligent beings? But I guess that's besides the point. I mean , what do expect in these movies except a fair amount of gore, and a bevy of naked bodies. Yet the director doesn't have enough talent to make even that interesting. In fact this movie suffers from the one sin that most movies never recover from. It is incredibly dull!!! The only things that liven up this movie are the crappy but fun fake gore scenes and the beauty of the ladies themselves. And, too often, even that doesn't work.
So what have here is a mess of a movie, one that was made in an attempt to cash in on two exploitation elements that should go hand-in-hand with each other. Still, it can't even get that right. So it ends up creating a new low for this genre of slasher films. And believe me, that is truly horrifying.
Managing to be both dull and inept, "Hatchetman" is one of the worst examples of this sub-genre! It's your standard psychopath stalks strippers movie, only done with a lack of suspense and talent. Stultifyingly bad in almost every department, this movie is poorly acted and limply written, with all the clichés present. The mystery is so simplistic that you figure out the identity of the murderer five seconds after you first meet him. And, as is required for this type of film, all characters act like complete, blithering idiots. In fact both the writers and the actors seem to have no sense of character development or motivation. All of the situations that should seem normal to each individual character, feel false. Even the dialogue feels forced.Which leads me to ask this question. Why do conversations in movies like this always feel as if they would never happen in the real world? Is there no writer competent enough to make these characters sound and act like normal, intelligent beings? But I guess that's besides the point. I mean , what do expect in these movies except a fair amount of gore, and a bevy of naked bodies. Yet the director doesn't have enough talent to make even that interesting. In fact this movie suffers from the one sin that most movies never recover from. It is incredibly dull!!! The only things that liven up this movie are the crappy but fun fake gore scenes and the beauty of the ladies themselves. And, too often, even that doesn't work.
So what have here is a mess of a movie, one that was made in an attempt to cash in on two exploitation elements that should go hand-in-hand with each other. Still, it can't even get that right. So it ends up creating a new low for this genre of slasher films. And believe me, that is truly horrifying.