DVD review: Hatchetman (Video 2003)

College coed by day and a stripper by night, Claudia's (Cheryl Wagner) dream of becoming a lawyer seems within reach until her co-workers start turning up dead, victims of a brutal serial killer. Can Claudia and her friends stay alive along enough to expose the killer, or will they become the Hatchetman's next victim? Hatchetman is written & directed by Robert Tiffi. The acting ranges from bad to poor. There are moments of unintentional comedy due to bad acting, some awkward situations and bad dialogue. On the technical side the camerework and editing is good. There are no thrills or atmosphere in this and despite the potential of the topic this is áctually pretty boring. To my great surprise the gore is limited to one scene where a character gets her throat slit, beside that scene, which I believe is computer rendered, we have to make do with blood splashing over nearby objects. As expected, from the plot, we get gratuitous T & A from several actresses and plenty of scenes of striptease most of which are unsexy and are sure to put you to sleep. Just too bad that most the girls aren't that attractive but I must say that Nina Tapanin and Cheryl Wagner as college coeds by day and strippers by night are very pleasant to the eyes. But while almost all other females provide nudity the cutie Cheryl Wagner manages keep her clothes on throughout the flick (pretty sure that a body double is used in the prolonged shower scene and during the sex scene she has).
This review is based upon the Swedish region 2 DVD release from Nordisk Film. It has swedish, danish, finnish and norwegian subtitles.
Rating: 1½ out of 7. What a disappointment this is. Not considering some of the already mentioned flaws I must say that Hatchetman would have been much better if they given the kills the same amount of attention as they so lovingly give to the T & A of the female castmembers. This movie is in dire need of graphic/on screen kills as it in its present shape fails to entertain even the most forgiving slasher fan.

/JL