Shakefire talked with writer and director Adam Green. He's created the new face of the horror genre with Victor Crowley and Hatchet and now returns for the sequel, Hatchet II. The film takes place exactly where the first one left off and it just as outrageous and over the top as before. 

Shakefire: Hatchet is classic American horror. How are you keeping the sequel that way?

Adam Green: First of all, the best thing about the sequel is that everything that happens in it was already decided and planned before we made the first one so the vision is very, very true to what the vision was. I think we were able to keep that same sense of fun and fandom that the first one had. When you watch the movie you can pretty much cut it directly together with the first movie and the only inconsistency is the actress playing Mary Beth. But other than that, they fit together as one long movie and it even starts on the same frame that the other one ended on. I’m very happy about the fact that it feels so much like the first movie. I’m glad that we were able to take our time and go do some other things first so we could come back with the same passion and enthusiasm that we had the first time around.

SF: The first film had some of the most memorable death scenes such as the belt sander and such. What can we expect from Hatchet II?

AG: More and better. We have a little bit more to play with this time. We had more time on set to do things. Robert Pendergraft is the key makeup effects on Hatchet II. He used to be John Buechler's shot forman and he’s the guy who did some of the best stuff in Hatchet I such as Mrs. Permatteo getting her face ripped in half in one take. That was Robert. He got to step up to the plate which is really cool to promote somebody and give them their first big change. I really think he knocked it out of the park cause these were some really difficult things to pull off that nobody’s ever done before. Everything has to be the old school way, no CGI, no computer graphics. This was all tangible silicon latex like the real thing.

Some of them, I mean, they’re just very, very ridiculous and over the top much in the vein of the first one. We sorta took the belt sander and Mrs. Permatteo's kill and we thought, “Okay, this has to be the standard and we need to try to do just as good as this if not better where needed.” One of the things I think I did right in the writing is that with the first Hatchet we wrote “grabs the face and tears it in half without cutting away.” I didn’t know if we were going to be really pull that off or what the response was going to be but being in theaters and seeing everybody cheering and clapping, the rest of the deaths were good but that one was really the peak of the movie. We structured Hatchet II in a way where the deaths keep one upping each other as they go and they keep getting more and more violent. I think if people are fans of the deaths of the first one they’re bound to really enjoy this one.

SF: With movies like Saw and Hostel, people have called them “torture porn.” Would you say it’s more like that or something different?

AG: Yeah, this is more in the vein of the 80’s stuff. I never ever want to say anything negative about Saw or Hostel. James Wan and Eli Roth are close friends of mine and I really do think they got a bad rap for the torture porn thing because the original Saw is not even a violent movie. Everything is really violent and not very gory but people remember it as this very visceral movie.

With the Hatchet stuff it’s all about fun. The best compliment that I get is when fans come up and say thank you or watching people leave the theater and they’re all smiling. I think that that’s something we don’t have enough of anymore in horror. On the studio mainstream side of things it’s very by-the-book especially with remakes. Something sort of happened this decade where it became about punishing the audience. The death scenes in Hatchet are bigger and more depraved than anything they’re coming out with but with the tone you can tell that people doing this are having a really fun time. You can hear the crew laughing almost. I think that’s why people have responded so positively towards it because it kinda reminds you, especially during the 20’s or 30’s, why you got into this in the first place. It wasn’t about watching somebody getting strapped to a chair and tortured. It was about monsters and effects and fun.

SF: It seems like nowadays, films are going back towards the classics with the likes of Piranha 3D, etc.

AG: I think they realized that the world is depressing enough right now and if you’re going to pay $10/$14 to see a movie you want to enjoy it. One of the best things about the Hatchet series now is I think when you watch it at home, yeah it’s really fun and whatever, but if you actually see it in a theater that’s got a lot of people there that are into this stuff when you feel that energy of people cheering and clapping when people get killed and are laughing, that’s the experience. I’m very grateful that all my films so far have got some sort of theatrical run but am really excited to see that Hatchet II is not only getting a theatrical run but that it’s being intact and unrated. The first one, by the time it hit theaters, was very very tepid. This one is everything that we shot is the movie that we made and what people are going to see.

SF: So Hatchet II is the exact film that you want fans to see?

AG: Yeah, it’s completely intact and exactly the movie that I made. It’s really great because we had a distributor who was really down to kinda think outside of the box and make the movie with us. Not only is that rare in the movie industry but it’s almost unheard of. We could have gone anywhere with the sequel and a lot of people were interested because they thought there was a franchise here, they thought there was money there. We were very good about sifting those people out because they said things like, “The first one was like a cult film. Why don’t we kinda broaden it up a little bit? Maybe don’t be so in your face with the gore and the death scenes and make it something that people who don’t necessarily like these movies can still enjoy and get into.” We were like, “Dude, you don’t get it at all.” This is something for us, and we’re not trying to get the 17 year old passive horror fan who just goes to see the remakes. These are very much movies made by fans for fans, which is kinda a real shitty thing to say that everyone tries to say.

It’s very evident when you watch these movies that we wear our love for the stuff that we’re paying homage to, we wear it on our sleeves very proudly. There’s even some great inside jokes in Hatchet II where we even acknowledge some of the shit we got from the first one. Two of my favorite moments in it, one in the first movie, especially the theatrical version, there’s a lot of scenes where we’re just randomly chucking buckets of blood against trees and foliage and stuff, and you can almost tell that if the camera zoomed out a bit you can see somebody holding the bucket of blood.  This time we only do it once and it’s very, very deliberate and I’m very happy because the screenings I’ve gone to in Europe so far, as soon as we cut to the shot of the tree just sitting there people start clapping because they know it’s coming. They definitely have a sense of humor about taking shots about our film.

There’s also the good line where somebody is explaining who Victor Crowley is and somebody in the cast is like, “What you mean like Jason Voorhees?” We definitely have a sense of humor; there’s no retention to these movies which is why I think it’s so funny because they’re screenings for critics. What do you think is going to happen when this 45 year old dude who writes for whatever this newspaper is, gets assigned Hatchet II and has to go to this press screening at 10 in the morning with six other people and sit in the theater and watch this movie? It’s like what do you think they’re going to say?

We love that stuff. The horror sites, the magazines, they usually for the most part tend to really enjoy it and embrace it. Then you start to read the reviews from some of the mainstream places and they’re just hilarious. My favorite from the first one was the LA Times, either the LA Times or LA Weekly. They said all this movie is is a bunch of teenagers having sex and doing drugs and getting killed one by one. Had they even seen the movie, there are no teenagers in it, there’s no sex, there’s no drugs, and they get killed in fucking twos. So literally everything they named wasn’t in the movie [laughs].

It’s like I say to everybody, if you’re going to do this and you care about reviews, just do something else because you’re not going to get that type of love when you’re doing something like this. You make these movies for that blue collar kid in the Evil Dead 2 shirt who buys his ticket every year to go to the Fangoria convention who has this awesome art collection on his wall with the posters and action figures. That’s who this is for and we’re very proud to do it.

SF: It seems like it’s something that you have to have a real passion for and not care about how much money you make. Those usually turn out to be the best films.

AG: Well with the first one, when I turned in the script to my agent they were very confused. They were like, “I don’t get the tone. Is it funny or is it scary?” I’m like, “It’s just cool.” They sent it out to a few places and the first rejection letter we got was from a major studio and the executive said, “Look I really like this and I thought the writing was brilliant however, it’s not a remake, it’s not a sequel, and it’s not based on a Japanese one so it will never get made.” For most of the people who know the story, that was our promotional poster: It’s not a remake, it’s not a sequel, and it’s not based on a Japanese movie. When Anchor Bay took the movie to theaters, they made the decision to take that tagline off the poster and just call it “Old School American Horror” which I understand but what I liked about that tagline was it was a statement against what was going on with the genre at the time and was a big wink that showed that the movies fun and we had a sense of humor. I think the way the first one was marketed was as a very straight forward scary movie. It took a lot of people off guard when they saw it. They were like, “Why is this funny?”

SF: 3D seems to be all the rage right now in film, especially with the horror genre. Is there a reason why you decided against it?

AG: I don’t really see the need for it. The sequel was designed before we made the first one. If you’re going to do a 3D movie, the movie should be built around that but a lot of times because it’s a gimmick to get people to pay to see it, they do it after the fact, this who conversion thing, and it gives people a headache. Something like Avatar, I thought the 3D was astounding and the technology was there and the money was there to do it right. I’m not against it in any way. I just think you need to do it right and not be a gimmick.

There’s already talk about is there going to be a Hatchet 3 and are we going to do it or whatever. I’m not really concerned with that. I’m worried about this one right now and we’ll see what happens with this one. I already have my next two projects on the books at this point so there’s no time for me to do a Hatchet 3 anytime soon. If they wanted to spend the money to do it right and the movie could be designed to have gags and chills that really fit with the 3D, then I wouldn’t be against it but I’m not looking for that. I just don’t really care about that I guess. If I cared about that I wouldn’t have done a remake of my first movie.

SF: Sounds like you’re more concerned with the story rather than trying to make 3D fit it.

AG: Yeah, that and getting an original movie made is so hard right now. I don’t think people realize that. A lot of movie fans like to say that Hollywood’s run out of ideas and all they do are remakes. They only do remakes because that’s what fans keep paying to see. If a remake came out and nobody went to see it, it would be over that night. Unfortunately the original stuff gets condemned to these limited releases or art house theaters. Or when they do actually break though, like something like Drag Me to Hell, our lord and savior Sam Rami comes back to the genre when he didn’t have to and makes a kick ass movie and nobody went. But they will all go and throw money at the remakes and then cry about them on their little message boards afterwards. I wish people realize that they wield the power because it’s their wallet. It’s up to them to demand something original. Especially with Hatchet II, which is coming out unrated, nobody’s done this in 25 years. If this actually performs well in the theaters that it’s in and the industry looks at the per screen average and says, “Holy shit, people went!” then more people are going to start doing it.

SF: Kane Hodder returns as the role of Victor Crowley. What can you tell me about him.

AG: Yes, I hope that whether this is the end of Hatchet or whether they make 50 of them, I really hope that as long as Kane Hodder wants that role that that’s his role. I was very, very disappointed, and I’m not just saying this because he’s a good friend at this point; when they made the decision to recast him in Freddy vs. Jason, that was Kane’s role and the opinion of “well, you can’t change Robert Englund because it’s his face but who cares who we put behind that hockey mask” was…they were fucking wrong and the fans know. Kane loved that character and was totally down to do it and essentially got pushed out because it was cheaper and easier to get somebody else.

I like the fact that Victor Crowley is him. I love that you can see his expression through the makeup, especially in this one. We didn’t change what he looks like; he looks the same but the makeup job is much better applied so he has full movement and range of emotion on his face. He is Victor Crowley and I hope that he always is Victor Crowley.

SF: There are so many iconic faces in the horror genre; Jason, Freddy, Michael Myers. Where do you see Victory Crowley fitting in with that?

AG: There’s a bunch of things you could say about that. With horror, you have to give it about 20 years before you can actually make that call. When the first one came out and so many critics were saying that finally we have a new icon. You’re not an icon unless it’s been 20 years and the new generation of horror fans knows who you are. That’s when you’re an icon. So right now, I think he’s a new villain. I think he’s got a great mythology; he’s got a great look. That much is cool but I don’t think you can call anybody that until it’s been a while longer.

The other thing is that those movies like the Halloween sequels, the Friday movies, and the Nightmare movies, they were like studio movies after a certain point that were on 2000 screens with tons of marketing money behind them. They were very much pushed into the pop culture. Whereas with Hatchet, the first one was on 80 screens with really no marketing behind it and then the audience found it. It’s kind of a cult thing. And then Hatchet II, it’s the same thing. We’re only on like 65 or 70 screens so you’re not going to see Hatchet II in the top 10 at the box office. You’re not going to see it break $1 million most likely but the audience is there for it.

Looking at characters like Ash from the Evil Dead movies, like when those came out those were not box office successes; they were not mainstream movies but everybody knows the Evil Dead stuff. They know Ash.

In a perfect world I hope that 15 to 20 years from now I’m still doing these conventions and kids are coming up with their Victor Crowley tattoos and their t-shirts and toys and masks, with their hatchets, things like that. Already that’s been overwhelming to experience. When somebody comes up and they have Crowley tattooed on their leg and they have the hatchet tattooed on their arm, it’s very cool to see people embrace it like that.

SF: Anything else you’d like to add?

AG: I’m so lucky and grateful that people embraced the first one the way that they did because the career that I’ve had since then, the career that I have now, it’s all because of that. It was amazing making a movie with my friends that was really just something for us and to see so many people embrace it and meet so many friends that I always had that I just had never met before. The reason why we waited a long time to make this, because three years is actually considered a long time apparently, was because we wanted to do it right. I think the fact that the same crew from Hatchet I came back to make Hatchet II, that’s never happened before for a slasher movie. Like all the key people, the production designer, the makeup effects, the VP, the camera operator, the gaffer; they’re all back. That’s really a testament to the fans. You know it’s just a cliché thing to say. Oh, it’s for the fans but I mean, never before has a movie been made for its fans more so than this one. So people who supported the first one, from all of us thank you and we hope that they have a really good time.