Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet (2009)
Directed by: Frank Sabatella
Written by: Elke Blasi, Frank Sabatella
Starring: Bill Moseley, Danielle Harris, Nate Dushku
Reviewed By Ross Hughes
Fans of Halloween finally get their wish, a blast of what that Franchise could have been like after Part IV…….
I have to be honest! For modern day horror fans, Blood Night will suck! Seriously, bad acting, cheap production, it does everything wrong, that many will only laugh and feel pity for…
So why did I love it?
Because, if you like me, you childhood was influenced by films like Sleepaway Camp and Slumber Party Massacre, then you will rejoice at a film whose heart is firmly in the 80’s, a hark back to the days when the Slash genre was in full swing, when all you needed was a masked fiend hacking young virgins to death to watch on a Friday Night! Yes Blood Night is at times really hard to watch, but then so were many of the so called slash films of that era, and they are now considered classics!
We start in 1978, where a young girl named Mary Hatchet has just had her first period. Sadly though its not a memorable occasion, because somehow this ignites a rage from inside her and she goes on and kills her mother and father in brutal fashion. We skip a few years on, and Mary is locked in an Asylum where she sits naked. Her stance excites the local guard who rapes her in brutal fashion. Three months later, the staff discover Mary is pregnant and soon she is given birth to which the baby dies. This drives Mary to the brink of despair and she escapes and kills all the staff, before getting shot down by a police patrol car while holding the head of the guy who raped her. All this happens before the credits roll by the way!
Finally when the credits roll we get a montage of newspaper clippings, and if you can just ignore the first paper which states that Mary killed her parents in 1892???????, and just read the rest, you discover that writer and director Frank Sabatella has come up with a novel way of getting a new holiday has a horror centre piece–invent one! Yes, Halloween, Friday 13th, Valentines Day, April Fools Day, even Thanksgiving Day (check out Deathproof) have all been used for horror dates, and with nothing else left, Sabatella just decides to make one up.
Blood Night, is celebrated because of what Mary Hatchet done all those years ago. Students wear masks of her face, they buy the booze, and try to out do each other with practical jokes. In other words, an excuse for them to drink themselves stupid, do silly things and then have loads of sex, which of course again outlines how pure 80’s fare this is! Another notable reason is that the acting of some of these students is quite horrendous, my wife even at one stage questioned why I was watching this shite!
One of the reasons is because the name attached to the film is a certain Danielle (Halloween) Harris who again cements her roots in the horror genre. I have to admit though, its a good long half hour before she makes her appearance, and for a while I was questioning was she even in the film, but she turns up, just has the house party involving the main crowd is underway. She also immediately steals the show with a tale of what happened to her before she came into the new town, which at first brings a sense of dread and then a priceless pay off that will have you thinking “what a sick bitch!”.
The party gets underway, this is after the gang go to the cemetery and try to connect with the spirit of Mary, only to be interrupted by the groundkeeper Grave Yard Gus (Bill Moseley) who tells them a quite freaky ghost story involving a dead Mary looking for her baby daughter! Nothing much happens for a while, the teen dialogue at times tests you nerves, there is a cool Tom Jones sex gag that made me chuckle, but just as you wonder when the killings are going to start, one of the couples decide to have some sex, which if you have seen enough Jason films, you know that is a cue for the mayhem to start.
And start they do!
Necks being snapped, eye balls being gorged, intestines slowly wrapped around an Axe, honestly, this is a dream for all Slash fans. It seems that Mary may well have returned from the grave, but then if you desperate to watch this film, then you must have seen enough to know the mid way twist. Its here that fans of Halloween finally get their wish, a blast of what that franchise could have been after part 4…..
Yes its dumb! Some of the characters do silly things and many will question my rating, but I am purely judging this as a huge fan of the slash genre, and for that Blood Night can not be questioned, despite all its shortcomings……
OVERALL: Strictly for Slasher fans only, a wonderful throwback to the delights of Sleepaway Camp and co, and in Mary Hatchet, the genre has a new queen bitch to get excited about…..
Rating: 
[pt-filmtitle]Blood Night: the Legend of Mary Hatchet[/pt-filmtitle]
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