HATCHET 3

Kicking off right from where its predecessor ended, HATCHET 3 opens on Honey Island Swamp with Marybeth (Danielle Harris) making mincemeat of the monstrous Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder).

Or so she thinks.

Despite being blasted in the face with a shotgun, Victor rises from the dead and has one more attempt at killing Marybeth - only for a chainsaw to self-ignite and chop him in half. Severing his head for good measure, Marybeth strolls off into the woods with it as a trophy.

You can imagine how alarmed Sheriff Fowler (Zach Galligan) is when she eventually happens upon his small backwater town and saunters into the police station brandishing said head. She speaks of a massacre out at the Swamp, and insists that she is carrying the head of the perpetrator - the fabled, voodoo-cursed monster Victor Crowley. Not one who's willing to entertain "urban myths", Fowler has Marybeth hosed down and then tossed in to a cell.

But, in the meantime, he's obliged to take a team out to the Swamp and investigate Marybeth's claims of some 20 bodies to be found out there.

While Fowler's away, his ex-wife Amanda (Caroline Williams) turns up and charms her way past deputy sheriff Winslow (Robert Diago DoQui) and to the cell holding Marybeth. She advises that she is a firm believer of the Crowley legend - and, furthermore, believes she knows how to stop the seemingly unkillable creature once and for all.

Before long, Winsow is driving Amanda and Marybeth out to the bayou too. Meanwhile, Fowler's men are in the thick of it - and soon to discover that Marybeth's story was all too disconcertingly true...

From the opening declaration which informs us that Dark Sky Films are co-producers, it's evident that HATCHET 3 is a film aimed squarely at a hardcore fan base. That's why it can get away with kicking off right from where HATCHET 2 ended, and that's why the film sticks to fan-pleasing convention to the tee: regular bouts of insane gore; a complete disdain for CGI; a crunching metal track playing over the opening titles (Gwar, in the case); characters straight out of the Tarantino school of screenwriting (cool nerds; wisecracking racists; hard-nosed babes etc); profane humour delivered at deafening volumes; even an early scene of semi-nudity (Harris in the shower) just to ensure all exploitation boxes have been ticked.

You can add to this, of course, one of the most crowd-pleasing casts in memory: Hodder (several FRIDAY THE 13THs), Williams (THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2), Harris (HALLOWEEN 4 and 5) and Galligan (GREMLINS) are also joined by the likes of Sid Haig (THE DEVIL'S REJECTS) and Derek Mears (the FRIDAY THE 13TH remake) in smaller roles. Even Adam Green, director of the original HATCHET and the underrated FROZEN, has a tiny cameo role.

Hodder, who also co-ordinated the film's plentiful stunts, appears to be having a lot of physical fun in his villainous role. He gets to literally mash several heads into bloody pulps, and does so with relish. The FX work is thankfully of the 'old school' variety; relying on foam latex, prosthetics and fake blood (the latter is sometimes a little too thin to achieve realism).

Though incredibly gory, the action is shot and edited in such a way that the violence never disturbs or repels. Rather, it's presented as outlandish and cartoonish: it fits with Scott Glasgow's overblown orchestral score and frequent forays into comedy well.

HATCHET 3 isn't the type of film that exists for critics to pull apart its shortcomings in terms of performances. Needless to say, the characters that populate this film are typically one-dimensional types and have little to offer other than the aforementioned crass one-liners. Harris is flatter than I expected of her, leaving Williams - hair cropped in a manner that resembles Jamie Lee Curtis' in HALLOWEEN H20 - to create the biggest impression. Elsewhere, the cast are here largely as fodder for the monster; Green's screenplay doesn't bother wasting time by giving them rounded-out characters as a result.

At 78 minutes in length the film is brisk. And yet, it still becomes tiresome during the second half. This is due to the distinct lack of tension as Victor wanders around in the open, people shooting noisy guns at him to no avail and him then killing them, one by one by one. It all becomes a tad repetitive and nullifying.

Metrodome's UK DVD presents the film uncut (this is the full version, identical to the 'unrated director's cut' that's also been released in the US) in a reasonably strong 2.35:1 transfer. Image is enhanced for 16x9 televisions, while blacks and contrast allow for a good sense of depth alongside a healthy amount of detail. The colours are a little washed out, but this may be a stylistic choice of the director, former Green protégé B J McDonnell...?

A 2.0 audio track in English plays through with predictably clean and consistent reliability. The amount of explosive sound effects and melodramatic music cues on the soundtrack would've perhaps been better served by a nice surround track, but hey ho.

Those looking for bonus features will have to make do with a trio of trailers which open the disc: the MANIAC remake, LOVELY MOLLY and DRAGON.

This disc opens to a static main menu page. Its scene-selection menu is also static, and affords access to the film via 12 chapters.

Made by horror fans for horror fans, HATCHET 3 is cheap but minor fun that doesn't offer much more than frequent gore, lots of noisy set-pieces and loud expletive-riddled one-liners in-between. It entertains, on a nominal level.

By Stuart Willis