Starring Joel Moore, Deon Richmond, and Tamara Feldman. Rated 18A.

The movie industry can be an incredibly strange creature, case in point being the theatrical release of Hatchet . How this utterly worthless slasher flick managed to avoid going straight to video and then directly to the bargain bin will confound discriminating horror fans for days, if not weeks.

Maybe it helped that the filmmakers persuaded horror icon Robert Englund of Freddy Krueger fame to do a cameo in the opening scene. Englund plays a cantankerous redneck hunting crocodiles in a Louisiana swamp with an idiot son he can barely stand. "Goddamn queer's got to squat to take a leak," he complains after his doomed offspring heads off to relieve himself.

Joel Moore the slacker-looking guy from various TV commercials plays Ben, who's taking in Mardi Gras with a group of party-till-they-puke pals when he suddenly realizes that rowdy chicks flashing their tits reminds him of the woman who just dumped him. So when he sets off to find a "haunted swamp tour" to cheer himself up, his buddy Marcus (Deon Richmond) reluctantly tags along to inject nauseating commentary about getting laid and becoming infested with crabs. "You're gonna be psyched you did this," Ben promises during one of their wittier exchanges. "I think I'd rather skin my own dick," Marcus replies.

After a corny cameo by Tony Todd - famous in horror circles for his titular role as the vengeful phantom in the inexplicably popular Candyman series Marcus and Ben hook up with a group of tourists that includes a businessman posing as a porn director. The pair of brain-dead models who flank him keep the crucial tit-flashing quotient high, and this leads to bickering bimbo banter like: "You do know that the vibrator goes in your cooch and not your ear, right?", and "Hey, why don't you suck your dad off again, bitch!" Hilarious, no?

Also along for the tour is foxy brunette Marybeth (Tamara Feldman), who explains the myth of Victor Crowley, a hideously deformed swamp dweller who was accidentally axed in the face by his father (Kane Hodder, the stuntman who played Jason Voorhees in four Friday the 13th sequels). Turns out the undead Vic Crowley is still out there, stalking and killing everyone he meets, and neither bullets nor pitchforks can stop him. This highly original plot device allows for several gruesome set pieces, but apart from the scene where Crowley chases down a chubby, middle-aged woman and pries her face apart, it's mainly just your typical, Jason-approved decapitations and limb-loppings. These brainiacs couldn't even get the gore right.