Outside of the novelty of having blacks in predominant roles, this slice'n'dice opus offers nothing really new or surprising. The premise is formula stuff: A group of aspiring filmmakers find out the hard way that a local urban legend that they are making a movie about is real. Director Sasha Krane, working from a talky and generic script by Gordon Greene, not only relates the familiar story at a sluggish pace, but also crucially fails to generate any much needed tension or creepy atmosphere. Worse yet, the annoying characters spend the bulk of the screen time bickering and arguing with each other, thereby ensuring that they are decidedly less than appealing and sympathetic. Paul Campbell as the hideously disfigured titular killer just ain't that scary and the attempts to make him a pitiable tragic figure fall flat. Ernie Hudson as the amiable local sheriff and Art Evans as van driver Sammy are both wasted in minor nothing roles. While it's nice to see "Assault on Precinct 13" star Austin Stoker in a decent sized part, he's alas saddled with playing an obnoxiously pompous and arrogant jerk. The rest of the cast are passable at best. Fortunately, this movie does deliver on the gore, so it's not a total wash-out. That said, both the limp dissatisfying ending and Vincent Gillioz's standard hum'n'shiver score also leave something to be desired. However, the sharp cinematography by Christopher Wailings gives this picture a pleasing crisp look. A pretty blah and forgettable flick.

But then, anybody who decides to go ahead and watch this will find that out. As a devoted watcher of horror movies of all budgets, I would have liked to have enjoyed this one a little more. Overall, it's just way too routine to really work, and any moments that could conceivably be pinpointed as the highlights are few and far between. A pity, because this is the first genre film that I've seen since 1990's "Def by Temptation" that had a predominantly black cast (with a few token white guys on hand here). Written by Gordon Greene, one of its actors, it tells the story of a deformed murderer who as a child had seen his mother, a prostitute, slaughtered by a john. This same individual then makes life miserable for a film crew attempting to tell his story. Unfortunately, it's too hard to really care for many of these characters; by the end, one can start liking them a bit more, but by then it's too little, too late. The makeup effects and gore are decent enough, so if the prospective viewer is a gore junkie, they at least can get some entertainment out of this. The cast does feature some familiar faces, but they're basically just picking up a pay cheque: the great Ernie Hudson is reduced to a thankless cameo role as the local lawman, who flirts with his sexy young deputy but who doesn't do much else. One will also recognize character actor Art Evans, as the aged driver Sammy; he's been in such things as "Fright Night" and "Die Hard 2". As for the other actors, they're tolerable at best, but one good thing is that some of the ladies are quite attractive; too bad there's no sex or nudity in this thing. This is particularly tough going in its first half, which mostly consists of the characters arguing and fighting with each other. The horror quotient finally picks up in the second half, but the final body count may be too small for some tastes. The killer, played by Paul Campbell, just isn't that interesting overall. This is the kind of thing I couldn't really recommend to anybody, unless they're die hard horror fanatics willing to try out anything they see in a store, and even they might come away disappointed. Proceed at your own risk. Four out of 10.

I haven't written a review for a film in quite a while but after watching this movie I feel compelled to do so!! I have NOTHING good to say about this movie at all!! The big stars of this film are Art Evans and Ernie Hudson but they only appear in this film a TOTAL of about 5 minutes COMBINED. The acting is horrendous, some of the worst I've EVER seen and I've seen MANY bad-acted movies. I would even put the movie "The Room" above this one in terms of better acted bad movies. There are NO redeeming qualities about this movie so I'm going to stop now because I just realized that I'm wasting my time reviewing a film that ALREADY wasted my time!!! Just stay away from Machete Joe!!!!

Anyone who would give this movie 10 stars is either part of the production crew or severely brain damaged. This film has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Do yourself a favor and avoid this steaming pile of feces. Two grade school children with a webcam could put together a better production than this. I've seen videos on U tube that were far more entertaining. I would imagine they pulled the script from a Universal Studios port-a-potty, then enticed a few homeless people to act in the film by offering them day old donuts as payment. The rest of the budget probably went to hookers and blow. Take a hint producers of this turd: If you are going to make a movie this horrible, you had better switch to pornography as those movies don't depend on stories or acting ability. Sorry for spoiling your scam of throwing up fake 10 star reviews in an effort to sucker people into paying money to watch your horrible waste of time. If you want to put up these fake reviews you should probably put up a more believable 4 stars, as even that is far more than this movie deserves. Just so you know, I saw this movie FOR FREE and it was turned off after the first ten minutes. It was that bad.