Hatchetman (2003)
Directed by Robert Tiffi
Screenplay by Robert Tiffi
Not only is Hatchetman a typical example of a psycho slasher film but it reaches even further back into the cautionary tropes about moving to the big city. In fact, there are so many cliches in this film that you might almost wonder if it's a parody. Stripper trying to get into law school? Check. Stripper being stalked by ex-boyfriend who just got released from prison? Check. New girl in town who wants to try out stripping to make some money and is now possibly going to get killed when she should really just go back to Smalltown, USA and marry the first single guy who can operate a tractor? Check. Girls who take showers while riddled with fear? Check. Killer who puts on a gruesome mask and a hooded sweatshirt? Check. Killer who can miraculously survive a pitchfork to the chest and escape before the end credits to allow for a sequel that will never happen? Check. That's already more checks than you'll find in Prague. (That pun is still not as bad as the cliches in Hatchetman.)
Horror films play on and with fear. Fear of the unknown is the key fear. It's the fear that something that we can't quantify is going to jump out of somewhere dark and end our existence. In Hatchetman this is combined with the fear of the gruesome or ugly. The mask the killer wears is seriously scary rotted flesh skeleton toothed monster. But, it is still just a mask. And once you realize that you're not really dealing with a supernatural creature (albeit one with a hand axe picked up from the local hardware depot) then the fear is quantifiable. And unlike a creature like a T-Rex a killer with a mask and an axe is almost charmingly human scale. And because he's not a ghost or some sort of crazed super-zombie the fear is mitigated and transformed. On the one hand a human scale killer living in a rational world is not as scary as a super smart shark that can float in the air. On the other hand, Norman Bates is scary because he is possible. And a stalker with an axe is possible. Although some of the hacking he's able to do with very little swinging room are quite improbable and more than likely physically impossible. Seriously. Hatchetman is able to hack off limbs with a handaxe while sticking his arm into the driver's side window of a car and swinging in that narrow space. That's almost ridiculous even for a supernatural slasher.
But of course, the fact that he's targeting strippers is what moves us into the realm of the ridiculous psycho slasher subgenre of film. The killer implicates our own voyeuristic tendencies in his complex web of morality. On the one hand he's killing these purveyors of sexuality presumably as a punishment for their commodification of that sexuality. But his very stalking of these girls makes him a voyeur and someone who seeks out sin, even as he tries to punish it. And what is the real reason the Hatchetman is killing strippers? You could say it's because of whatever motivation it is he reveals (I think it had something to do with his mother, probably. I really didn't care at that point.) But the real reason he's killing strippers is because strippers make awfully photogenic victims and it gives a perfect reason to show scenes inside a strip club. This is slightly better than the traditional made-for-cable "thriller" where the cops always seem to have to get information from a stripper, but not by much. Making the strippers an integral plot element is both more honest and more desperately obvious. But really, would it have been any less ridiculous if the victims were a college swim team whose members really liked to take long showers? It's the desires of the audience that are as much the problem as the poor schmucks who make this stuff. This civilization clearly has some issues. Big issues. And yeah, it's kind of ridiculous to try to work out these big issues while talking about a silly hatchet killer movie, but it seems more fruitful to try to get something out of having watched this film instead of being drawn into the question of which stripper's nipples were the most interesting.
The one thing that had me going in this film was that there were several candidates for the killer set up. The stalker released from prison was an obvious red herring. Rob the overly enthusiastic apartment manager who installs a camera in Star's bedroom was goofy enough that being the killer would have been a good contrast for his dumb regular persona. Gerry the rich guy with strange proclivities certainly would have been a good suspect from a class struggle perspective. For that matter, Curtis the actual killer (oops, spoiler) lives in a really nice house all by himself and so isn't exactly a poor down on his luck psychopathic murderer. The notable red herring is Marty the creepy guy who likes to work on his car and sneak into girls' apartments and steal their underwear. The combination of Marty, Rob and Curtis the Hatchetman makes Los Angeles into a place where your choices are A) Have your every move watched by a stalker with a hidden camera. B) Have your underwear stolen by someone who breaks into your apartment. C) Have your hands hacked off by an axe murderer. That's not a world of great opportunity in Hollywood.
The one perhaps unintentional red herring that had me going for a while was that I thought the killer could be the nervous first time stripper Molly, but maybe it was just that the actress was adding a subtle possibility there that wasn't actually plausible in the plot.
To go back to the strippers for a second I think they serve to some extant to distance us from the horror. If you think of horror stories (and murder mysteries) as a way of standing in for our fear of death then the victims serve as sacrificial replacements. The nearer these sacrificial stand-ins are to ourselves in form the closer we feel to the situation and the more catharsis we get from watching our substitutes die in our place. It serves to bring out our fear of death and then in some way allow us to deal with it.
Conversely, the further the victim is from ourselves the closer we get to a callous, even fetishistic enjoyment of seeing someone who isn't like us dying instead of ourselves or our substitute. Thus the cheers in the audience when Paris Hilton was killed in House of Wax. This thesis could go a long way to explain other horror movie tropes in terms of who gets killed and how. It's just an idea. I don't know how much I buy into it. Suffice it to say that I'm not a stripper in Los Angeles, but I am a human being and I'm still disturbed when I see any person get their hands lopped off by a guy with an axe.
The collecting aspect of Curtis the Hatchetman is interesting because it is emblematic of consumerist material desire. He can't just see the strippers, he has to kill them. He can't just kill them, he has to take a trophy for his collection. If the strippers are commodifying sexuality then the Hatchetman is commodifying death and making material collectibles out of it. Though, looking at the size of the refrigerator in his garage where he keeps his hands you have to wonder how many more people he can kill before he runs out of storage space in his current mode of collecting.
As for the big city? Well, it's the real killer, isn't it? People come from everywhere with their dreams of...whatever it is that people dream of and then they become strippers and then some psycho kills them. There's your cautionary morality tale: Beware of Hollywood and the psychos that dwell in it. And, in a larger sense, beware of the big city and the ways it can kill you.
On the other hand, the morality tale is diluted by the happy ending where Claudia is accepted to a law school in LA and her cop boyfriend Sonny finally proposes marriage, though Curtis the Hatchetman does manage to survive a pitchfork in the chest and evade capture so maybe he can still exist as a boogeyman to warn young folks about the dangers of moving to the big city and becoming morally lax.
In fact, that may be a more satisfying way of interpreting the ending than imagining that the filmmakers ever thought they'd make Hatchetman 2.
I thought I'd sworn off slasher films after the pile of them I watched a while back but I let this one slip through since it had been a while. Now I remember why I had avoided these kinds of films for so long. Films like this defy categorical interpretation. Is it misogynistic or does having Claudia survive and go to law school make it empowering. Does Molly become another slave to the system of exploitation or is she empowering herself by taking charge of her own sexuality? One of the reasons this film snuck up on me was that the cover art and description soft-pedalled the stripper aspect. The cover itself seems to indicate a forest motif (which would make more sense with the hatchet being the weapon of choice.) But it's hard to avoid the fact that this film can be summed up by the statement "If you love watching strippers, but also want to watch them get killed, then this is your movie."
Of course, it's equally true that if you replaced the word "stripper" with "attractive person" then you would not only be describing much of the horror genre but much of the murder mystery genre as well. How many Law and Order (or even more clearly, CSI) begin with the gruesome murder of an attractive person? (Sometimes even strippers.) So maybe there's something wrong with the culture in general and trying to pin it on one film that is more obvious about it is kind of disingenuous.
Claudia Wagner, stripper applying to law school -- Cheryl Burns (L.A. Noire) Are there any strippers who aren't applying to law school? Why is it always law school? I'd love to see a film where a stripper is working her way through a graduate program in Hermeneutics and is thus likely to have to remain a stripper even after she graduates.
Sonny Banner, Claudia's cop boyfriend -- Jon Briddell (Midnight Movie, 11/11/11, Hot Wax Zombies on Wheels) On the basis of films like this it seems clear that the entire LAPD is dating strippers and erotic novelists.
Molly, Claudia's roommate -- Nina Tapanin (Witches of the Caribbean, Wash Dry and Spin Out, Red Riding Hood Meets Frankenstein) You might dismiss the character of the innocent girl who gains self-confidence through stripping, but I like how you might almost believe she's the real killer.
Star -- Mia Zottolli (Blood Scarab, The Mummy's Kiss, All for Lust, Rolling Kansas, Carnal Desires) Star is pretty unsympathetic right up until you see that Rob the apartment manager has put a hidden camera in her bedroom. Even Curtis the Hatchetman thinks that's not cool, and he ends up killing her...with a hatchet...and keeping her hands as a trophy.
Chloe Bennett -- Racquel Richard (Expose)
Michele Spencer -- Elizabeth Ryan
Brittany Evans -- Fonta Sawyer
Rita -- Leila Renae aka Leila Hashemzadeh (Staying on Top, Passion Cove)
Tina -- Christina Lepanto
Robyn -- Robyn Heller (That Side of a Shadow)
Rob, the manager of a crappy apartment complex -- Chris Moir (In Hell) You know your character is doomed when the killer has better ethics than you.
Curtis Moore -- Darren Keefe Reiher (My Big Fat Independent Movie, Sons of Anarchy, 24, Chuck)
Marty, a panty thief/mechanic -- Matt McDonald (Scream, Freedom Park, Idol)
Daniel Strong -- Daniel Browne/Daniel Rhyder (The Cavanaughs, Layover, 3-Day Weekend)
DiAngelo -- Gino Maurizio
Dallas -- Gina Maurizio
Gerry Rubins, a rich guy who throws crazy parties -- Brian Katkin (Burial of the Rats, Dinocroc)
Officer Jacobs -- Dan Warner (Bunny Whipped, Goldmember, Norma Jean & Marilyn, NCIS, CSI, CSI: Miami, The Shield, Cold Case, 24, The Bernie Mac Show, Alias, Passions, Hallowed Ground, Criminal Minds, 2 Broke Girls)
Officer Mills -- Toney E. Smith (Take Down, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Sex Surrogate)
Plo
Tenant #2 -- Rachael Leigh Santhon (Passenger Side, Adjusting Arbie, What We Do Is Secret)
Police Officers -- Joseph Luis Rubin (Ali, Diagnosis Murder)
Tim Thomas (Rendition)
John D. Crawford (Elizabethtown, American Dreamz, Walk Hard, Step Brothers, The Vampire's Assistant)
David Banks (Nutty Professor II)
Jason LeGrande (Bikini Detectives, Yard Sale)
Ike Ogut (Kandahar, Bury the Evidence, CSI: Miami)
Carlos Osorio (Sexo con amor)
Duffey Westlake (Joan of Arcadia)
Alan Deane (The Cape)
Floyd Conder (Pants on Fire)
Cinematography by Ken Blakey (Mandrake, L.A. Heat, Freedom Strike, Executive Target, Beverly Hills Bordello, Bikini Summer, Bikini Summer II)
Original Music by Gerhard Daum (Hollywood Kills, Forsthaus Falkenau)
Bonus Trailer
Spinning Boris
Another Showtime original. In this one Jeff Goldblum and Liev Schreiber help Boris Yeltsin track down a masked killer who's hacking strippers to death with a handaxe.
