Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet (2007) Review

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(More customer reviews) In recent years, the horror genre has been plagued by more duds than gems. For every decent slasher film, there are scores of movies that barely deserve a second glance, much less a full viewing.
The reason for this is a conflict of interests that rarely compromise with each other. On one end, we have low budgeted movies that try to bring us back to the golden age of horror(circa the 1970s and 1980s) with their gritty kill-shots, fountains of blood, and enough bare breasts to make Hugh Hefner blush. On the other end we have high-gloss production houses putting out cookie-cutter horror stories, many with the dreaded PG-13 stamp.
With the release of Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet, we are given the best of both worlds; a movie made by fans(in horror afficionado/director Frank Sabatella), for fans, and with a dynamic production value to capture the guts, glory, and breasts, of the film for a stellar visual effect.
The story is as follows: A young girl named Mary Mattock(played by Patricia Raven) butchers her family for no apparent reason. We later learn that this is due to a physiological problem called Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder which makes PMS look like a walk in the park. The young woman(now played by Samantha Facchi) is sent to the King's Park Psychiatric Hospital, where she is raped by a hospital night-guard. She becomes pregnant, but loses the baby in child-birth. This brings on another intense bout of MDD in which she slaughters what seems to be all staff and patients at the hospital, and is gunned down by police.
The story brings us to the present, where high school kids celebrate that night of butchery by calling it Blood Night, and proceeding to paint the town red in a night of vandalism and excessive partying. The movie focuses on one group of kids, who decide to visit Mary Mattock, or as she is now known as Mary Hatchet, at her grave, and unknowingly release the ghost to wreck vengeance once again. One by one, the group is dispatched in various, high impact slaughterings, as they try to lay the spirit to rest.
Sounds simple? It's not, but who am I to ruin it for you?
This movie lacks in nothing for entertainment. The kill-shots are highly detailed, thanks to the superb special effects of Monster in My Closet special effects artist Jeremy Selenfriend and Harrington Talents virtual effects artist John Morena. Dismemberments, spinal readjustments, and blood washes all become intensely realistic by utilizing Selenfriend's definitive prop functions, from custom sculpted heads(and brains) to mouth interiors. To make sure these effects lack nothing on-screen, Morena utilized digital enhancements to help make the kill-shots pop off the screen with the addition of blood enhancements that were shot seperately, and then transcribed into the final edit. With these talented artists and the fantastic camera-work, the film popped off the screen, much to the glee of fans of gore.
There is humor interlaced into the horror, as well. Graveyard Gus(played by Bill Moseley) is nothing short of the drunken graveyard-keeper who drinks way too much whiskey and yaps about Vietnam. A conversation about Tom Jones between Alex(played by Nate Dushku) and Chris(played by Anthony Marks) had me giggling out loud. A male virgin wiping his brow with a pink, "Princess" pillow while getting frisky with a hot chick? This movie has it. The comedy is just enough to help the viewer fall into the comfort trap before being shown a decapitated head flying across a room. By balancing these bits of comedy into the horror, the bar of suspense is raised, because you never become too jaded by seeing an overflow of gore. Not that either way would be bad, but for Blood Night, comic relief makes the suspense grow. And lets not forget Eric(played by Billy Magnussen), who is the pinnacle of every sex-crazed high school guy we've ever known.
What's amazing is that all of these actors and actresses are able to turn their clown routines off when director Frank Sabatella calls for it, with great results of suspense. Let us not forget that scream-princess Danielle Harris, playing her part impeccably in the storyline as the knee-socked Alyssa, who can never seem to hold her liquor and brings back some intense stories of her time in school.
So what defines this movie beyond all others? High production, an extremely gifted cast, and intense kill-shots, all embedded into a suspenseful story-line where even if you think you know what is going on, you really don't. At the same time it's just good, head-jerking fun, a horror movie with serious overtones, but doesn't take itself too seriously. Think Wes Craven's Scream meets Lucio Fulci's The House By the Cemetary, and out of that seemingly scandalous affair comes its offspring, Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet.

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A group of teenagers celebrating the anniversary of the death of a local axe murderer suddenly find themselves face to face with the realities of this haunting urban legend.Long Island, 1978: A young girl named Mary Mattock gruesomely murders her family with a hatchet and is locked away for life in Long Island's notorious Kings Park Psychiatric Center.Ten years later, Mary escapes from the asylum, leaving a grizzly trail of bodies and blood in her wake.Gunned down by the police, Mary meets her own demise outside the sanitarium walls.This incident gave birth to the legend of Mary Hatchet's walking ghost and the mischievous night named in honor of her death, BLOOD NIGHT! Stemming from the real life Long Island legend of Mary Hatchet, Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet tells the tale of a group of teenagers enjoying their annual Blood Night festivities, when they come face to face with the reality of this haunting legend.One by one, the teens begin to disappear and meet their fate. As the body count rises, so do the unanswered questions about their missing friends and the secrets of Mary's horrifying past.Is there more to this legend than the vengeful ghost of Mary Hatchet?And if so, who will survive to tell the terrifying tale? Fueled by intense and energetic performances from Nate Dushku, Bill Moseley, Danielle Harris, and Samantha Facchi as Mary Hatchet, audiences are in for a non-stop splatter fest filled with sex, guts, and heads that roll!Blood Night puts a neck-breaking spin on the gory and gut-wrenching "slasher" pieces from the legendary decade of 1980's horror!
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The Maxx: The Complete Series Review

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(More customer reviews)I just got my copy today and am absolutely thrilled. The comments by the previous reviewer as to the video quality are more a comment on the quality of the animation itself. I've had three different copies of the show prior to this DVD and if I'm understanding him correctly, the flaws he's talking about were always there.
I have a taped copy that I have made myself from when the show ran in a marathon after it finished airing the very first time. This one is taped on archival library quality VHS that holds up amazing well (the tape cost $20 at the time in 1995). I also have another copy taped from the first airings on two separate regular VHS tapes and I have the store-bought tape that edited out 13 minutes of the show. I watched the hell out of the regular VHS tapes, but only watched the archival one a couple times and recently made a DVD transfer of it. I just finished watching the new DVD and comparing it to my archival DVD and am thrilled with these DVDs with just a couple of exceptions that I will address later.
As far as the picture quality, it looks stunning compared to all previous copies I had. I'm not watching it on a HDTV or an upconverting DVD player. Just a 32" Samsung and my 5-disc Toshiba player from several years back. But, the colors and sharpness have never looked this brilliant on this show. Yes, there are some animation flaws (like when Maxx is climbing out of the kitchen sink and there's a black line on the bottom of the water), but they have been there from the original airing. They are problems with the original source material and not these DVDs. I think some of the problems the previous reviewer mentioned might just be more obvious because the picture is sharper and cleaner. The bluriness of old TV airings on VHS tapes hide a lot of flaws, and this show was made CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP!
Now, for people looking for negative things, there are just a couple. The music changes from the VHS tape are still here. Any instances of "I Wanna Marry a Lighthouse Keeper" have either been removed completely (like when Julie goes to the police station) or have been replaced with "I'm in Love with a School Bus Driver" (in every other instance). Also, the background song has been completely removed from when Gone attacks Glorie, and the songs have been replaced when Julie is first shown in bondage at Gone's factory, when Maxx is chasing the Isz through the city streets, and when the white Isz has climbed up and is spying on Julie through her window.
Also, two small edits still exist in this version. When Maxx is running away from Retquark'n at the beginning of episode 7, after he says "All I have to do now is reach it," the line "By Rikkirackk, I love the run. To make my legs stretch into the grass" has been removed so it just goes right into him saying "Run Run Run". Also, in episode 9, when Julie asks Maxx if he thinks they can be killed, and he says "Absolutely, I'm sure of it". Her, response "Now there's a happy thought" is missing.
Other than those music changes and the two small edits, these DVDs exactly match the broadcast versions I had taped.
Just a warning as well, both discs played fine on my older Toshiba player, but on my cheap $50 Sony DVD player, while the first disc played fine, the second disc "Special Features" menu will not come up. The episodes play fine though. Also, my computer will not even recognize these discs, even though it plays other homemade burned DVDs fine. Not a big problem, but I was just wanting to make some comparison screenshots for some friends.
All in all, if you're a big fan of the series and of the comics, like me, and have watched your old VHS tapes over and over again, buy these DVDs!! Buy them now! If you're looking for top notch animation to watch on a HDTV as reference quality animation or something, you'll want to skip it. This is not Blu-Ray anime.

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In the murky alleyways of New York City, homeless Maxx huddles in his box and dreams of crushing evil villains.But when he bursts into the colorful netherworld of the Outback, the Maxx is a hero, in full purple splendor.His friend Julie, a freelance social worker, thinks the Maxx's alternate universe is just an escape from the harsh reality of New York-not realizing that she, too, roams the Outback as the Jungle Queen.Join the Maxx for deliciously demonic adventures in both worlds, as he scours streets and jungles in search of the link between his two realities.Will he be able to find the connection before it's too late?
This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.\r\n
This disc is expected to play back in DVD Video "play only" devices, and may not play in other DVD devices, including recorders and PC drives. \r\n

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