Hazard Jack is a 2014 American-made film directed by David Worth (Poor Pretty Eddie; House at the End of the Drive) and starring Amanda Maddox, Alison Lani and Macauley Gray. The film avoids the trappings of many recent horror films and focuses squarely on the 1980’s slasher aesthetic.
Pity poor Jack. Returning from serving his country and suffering with a particularly bad dose of post-traumatic stress disorder, he then finds he has been let go by his employer, the only source of comfort and routine he had left. Seeing little option but to roam around an abandoned hospital, biceps bared but face shielded by a large welders-type visor, he awaits trespassers to take out his anger on. Luckily for him, a group of alleged teenagers decide it would make the ideal venue for their annual paint-balling contest. There are three distinct factions within their number; a gaggle of vacuous, lust-crazed airheads; a couple of quieter more thoughtful types; two homosexual characters, leaving only someone in a wheelchair out of the catch-all demographic.
A sniff of alcohol is all it needs for these three groups to split up and for the dumbos to commence a game of strip target practice with the paint guns, a sequence which seems to take up half the film. The two young ladies comprise of so much plastic, they’ll be keeping cockroaches company in millenia to come, whilst the blokes both wear bandanas – they aren’t the most endearing types. Slowly, Jack (Quincy Taylor), offs the offending and offensive youths one by one, using an array of tools he presumably used to use in his day-job, including a nail-gun, flamethrower (!) and a power drill.
Helpfully, some of the teens have tied each other up in readiness for a spot of light bondage, the blindfolds they’re also wearing making Jack’s work somewhat easy. Despite the cavernous hospital literally spewing corridors and hidey-holes, the youngsters find themselves bumped off one-by-one by the ambling killer, preferring to hide in wall cavities than just walk out of the unlocked front door. A surprise pregnancy announcement, some interrupted fellatio which is being filmed on the male participant’s phone and some contemplation in the hospital chapel (!) bring us mercifully to the film’s ending, as well as our will to live.
Director, Worth, is probably best known for his 80’s fare Kickboxer and Bloodsport, the dialogue from which was seemingly ripped into tiny shreds and randomly reassembled to be used here. This is truly dreadful stuff, at no point offering any hope of suspense, violence or thrills, cheap or otherwise, rendering it as a disaster as both a film and, more specifically, a slasher. The ‘kids’ (average age approx 27) have absolutely no back stories of interest, the two gay characters throwing the LGBT’s work back several decades and the girls, the plastic surgery industry about the same. Jack himself, presumably a wrestler at some point, communicates in grunts for reasons left unsaid, hopefully the authorities stopped his benefits for using work tools for his own selfish means.
The spilled blood is of the squirty food-colouring kind and the slayings ultimately yawningly tame, despite the array of tools used and the odd heart ripped beating from its cavity. The sex and nudity is equally tiresome, not so much ‘soft-core’ as ‘padded’. There’s no reason why the slasher shouldn’t make a comeback but this is simply empty; no character, no scares, no excitement. If someone pointed to this as to why they didn’t like horror films, you’d be hard pushed to argue against them.
Daz Lawrence
