Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet is a tolerable enough film but it’s definitely one made for the slasher crowd than just the general audience. The acting isn’t the best, though Danielle Harris makes due with what she had, and the kills, while gruesome, aren’t anything memorable.
Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet (2011)
REVIEW NAVIGATION
The Movie | Special Features | Video Quality | Audio Quality | Overall
Genre(s): Horror/Slasher
Lionsgate | R – 85 min. – $26.98 | June 14, 2011
MOVIE INFO:
Directed by: Frank Sabatella
Writer(s): Elke Blasi and Frank Sabatella (written by)
Cast: Bill Moseley, Danielle Harris, Nate Dushku
DISC INFO:
Features: Featurettes, Outtakes
Number of Discs: 1
Audio: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 2.40
Subtitles: English, Spanish
THE MOVIE – 2.5/5
Note: This review contains some spoilers so you have been warned.
Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet is the latest in the long line of small budgeted horror-slasher films to be released since it is relatively cheap to make and allows new talent behind-the-camera to gain experience. The thing is, often enough these movies don’t exactly hold up too well and are usually dumb, clichéd and filled with 2-dimensional characters there for the picking. Blood Night is all those things and… nothing more. That said, it’s still somewhat entertaining even for somebody like me who isn’t into the slasher pictures.
The movie begins with the legend itself with Mary Mattock as a young girl who suddenly goes psycho – why we don’t know – on her mother stabbing her in the eye with a pair of scissors before going into the bedroom and slashing her father before returning to finish momma off. We fast forward several years where Mary is locked up in a psychiatric hospital where she’s abused by one staff member to the point that she became pregnant, though she lost the baby. With this loss, she goes super-psycho and unleashes her fury on the staff twisting the neck of a nurse and then harnesses her inner-Rambo on the rest before escaping but then is confronted by two cops who fearing their lives were in danger (yep, those two were probably the only smart characters in the entire film!), take a fire a few shots at her one hitting straight in the forehead.
And the end credits roll.
Ok, not really. We finally get to the opening credits letting the preceding bloodbath be our appetizer though for more bloodshed, we’ll have to wade through some inane/pointless dialogue, obligatory sexual content (some lovely ass-shaking) and introductions to characters who are only fodder for our killer. The list of victims for this feature includes the wacky Graveyard Gus (BILL MOSELEY; Halloween remake), a few generic guys (NATE DUSHKU, ANTHONY MARKS, BILLY MAGNUSSEN amongst others), and some chicks (ALISSA DEAN, MARYAM BASIR, SAMANTHA HAHN, etc) who have no problem shaking that ass and/or leading their man for a rumble in the bed. We are also introduced to Alissa (DANIELLE HARRIS) who grew up in town but moved away to Chicago and is back for a visit. I’m sure she’s an innocent girl…
After some racy dialogue and some T&A to satisfy the fans, no good slasher film can be without it, the action gets kicked into high gear. The party these friends were holding to celebrate Blood Night (in remembrance of Mary Hatchet) gets crashed by some unseen force, they flee to the very loony house that Mary escaped from and then the rest are up for grabs.
Blood Night isn’t really special in fact it’s sort of paint-by-numbers in terms of story and even the twist in the third act. That said, it’s not a bad movie as 
Danielle Harris, who I adore, does a half-decent job with having so little to work with while the rest of the cast are fine as stand-ins to be brutally murdered and some red-dyed corn syrup to spread across their bodies and on the walls.
The film was co-written and directed by Frank Sabatella makes his feature film debut and despite the average script, does present some kind of atmosphere especially at the beginning before becoming a derivative horror film.
Overall, Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet isn’t a special movie in my view, but I’m hardly a aficionado in the slasher subgenre so perhaps that group will get more out of this. Even so, it’s at least a tolerable film in a genre that more often than not fails than succeeds.
SPECIAL FEATURES – 2.0/5
The Making of Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet (7:18) is a very basic behind-the-scenes featurette where there are comments with the cast and crew interspersed with footage from the film.
Interviews (TRT – 28:30) – There are several individual interviews with the cast and crew: Frank Sabatella (5:11), Bill Moseley (5:11), Danielle Harris (5:05), Billy Magnussen (2:21), Nate Dushku (2:27) and Alissa Dean (8:15). Each one has the participant answering various, and mostly obvious, questions – like talking about their character – from a faceless person off-camera.
Outtakes (6:18) contains your usual line flubs and some alternate takes/adlibs.
Theatrical Trailer (1:37)
VIDEO – 4.0/5
The film is presented in anamorphic widescreen and a 2.40 aspect ratio. It might not be the best looking DVD visually speaking since it mostly takes place at night, but the reds do look quite good and I didn’t notice a whole lot of dust and/or scratches, though it does show up a couple of times.
AUDIO – 4.25/5
The Dolby Digital 5.1 track is uneven. For the beginning of the film the audio sounds fantastic but once we get inside the party house, the cheap production becomes evident as dialogue sounds very flat though the “thrilling” score is fine and makes up for the other limitations.
OVERALL – 2.75/5
Overall, Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet is a tolerable enough film but it’s definitely one made for the slasher crowd than just the general audience. The acting isn’t the best, though Danielle Harris makes due with what she had, and the kills, while gruesome, aren’t anything memorable. The story itself started out well enough when presenting the actual legend before it gets bogged down in the typical horror trappings and clichés.
Brian Oliver, The Movieman
Published: 06/18/2011