USA, 2003
Review: JA Kerswell
A hatchet-wielding killer in a rubber skull mask is murdering exotic dancers at an LA strip club. Sometimes more like a soft-core skin flick, it’s arguably worth sticking around until the end for a cheesy but slightly effective finale where the bras finally stay on.
Claudia (Cheryl Burns) and her new flatmate, Molly (Nina Tapanin), are putting themselves through college by working as exotic dancers at a downtown joint. Claudia—who is waiting to see if she has been accepted at law school—has been dating cop Sonny (John Briddell) for a year. One of the girls, Brittany (Fonta Sawyer), is invited to a private party at the house of a sleazy businessman, Jerry, but when she arrives, she is surprised by someone wearing a skull mask who attacks and kills her with a hatchet. Another stripper, Michele (Elizabeth Ryan), is attacked and butchered. The police note that the killer took both women’s hands and are immediately suspicious of Britanny’s ex-boyfriend, Daniel (Daniel Browne), who has just been released from jail after being put away by the testimonies of her fellow dancers after he mercilessly beat his ex. However, Claudia—who had taken a single class in criminology about serial killers—doesn’t think that Daniel fits the profile; telling the others, “He was a thug and a bully, but he wasn’t a serial killer!”
The strippers all live in an apartment building managed by the hyperactive Rob (Chris Moir), who has set up a camera to watch one of the women, the initially bitchy Star (Mia Zottoli); much to the horror of his friend Curtis (Darren Keefe Reiher), who warns he could go to jail for his voyeurism. Claudia and the others are also disturbed by hairy fellow resident and rogue mechanic Martin (Matt McDonald), who breaks into their apartments to put on their bras and panties. When Chloe (Racquel Richard) is killed in the same violent manner in her bathroom, the strippers must band together to ensure no one else becomes a bloody victim of the Hatchetman ...
It would be too cheap a joke to call this film a hatchet job, but it’s perhaps not far from the truth. The acting ranges from adequate to amateurish, with some of the performers clearly chosen less for their acting abilities and more because they look good with their bras pinging off. However, the performances rarely reach the level of being entertainingly bad. Much of the first half of the movie grinds on as joylessly as the dancers do in front of their dull, slack-jawed patrons. If it appeals to you, the repetitive stripping scenes might be a little titillating, at least at first, but by the fourth or fifth time, even the most hormonally driven heterosexual teenage boy would surely start to glaze over.
Unfortunately, the murder scenes tend to be just as mechanical and are shot without much flair (the not-so-special effects often simply extend to squirting a bottle of ketchup at a wall every now and then). You know you’re in trouble when the best scene in the movie is one borrowed from another film (the killer in the back seat of a car from URBAN LEGEND (1998)). Perhaps because the first two-thirds of HATCHETMAN is so lucklustre, the closing act feels like a master class in suspense by comparison. Okay, that’s a big exaggeration, but moving past the monotonous stripping scenes, the film makes some half-hearted attempts at creating thrills. The surviving players actually seem to get into their roles and have some fun instead of just reading lines from a script, though I doubt any of the performances were considered by the Academy that year. The ending at a remote house isn’t half bad, although since the killer has been stabbed in the leg and drags it behind him like Igor, it hardly makes for a zippy chase sequence. And the less said about the rushed motive (“Mommy did dirty things with her hands!”, and so the hatchetman needs to collect them from strippers—or something), the better. Still, it might be the only slasher film where the killer’s identity is revealed because of a botched attempt at making cocktails.
HATCHETMAN seems to have less in common with SCREAM (1996) and its early 2000s progeny than it does as an attempt to update films like Katt Shea’s much better STRIPPED TO KILL (1987). It ends with a half-hearted he’s-still-out-there ending that hints at a sequel. To almost everyone's surprise, a very belated sequel was made in 2024 by the same director, Robert Tiffe, called GIVE ME A HUG: HATCHETMAN 2 (although the plot summary suggests the link to the 2003 film is flimsy at best). As of now, the sequel’s budget is listed as just one single dollar on IMDB. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t exactly make me eager to check it out anytime soon.
BODY COUNT 7:
Female 4 / Male 3
HATCHETMAN (Trailer)
Thank you for reading! And, if you've enjoyed this review, please consider a donation to help keep Hysteria Lives! alive and get exclusive content and advance looks at site updates! Give a tip now via Ko-fi.