Jello Reviews - The "Hatchetfield" Musicals (Patreon)

↓↓↓ TIMESTAMPS BELOW! ↓↓↓

So this is a bit of a niche topic. For the uninitiated, Starkid Productions is an independent theater company that makes comedy and parody musicals released for free on YouTube. They got their start with Harry Potter musical parodies but have since moved onto actually making good things (for the most part).

Their most recent years-long project has been a series of original horror-comedy musicals all set place in the town of "Hatchetfield." In each story, a different disaster befalls the town and different characters must fight to survive it. This series was originally planned as a trilogy of musicals to be released three years apart: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals in 2018, Black Friday in 2019, and Nerdy Prudes Must Die in 2020.

But then, a funny thing happened in 2020 where the entire world was hit with a plague and live theater basically died for two years.

Unable to perform Nerdy Prudes as intended, the crew instead created a series of episodic staged readings called Nightmare Time. This series explores the characters and multiverse of Hatchetfield in a sort of Goosebumps-esque anthology episodes. Some of these are good! Most of them are not.

I recently had the chance to see a live performance of Nerdy Prudes Must Die which finally made it to the stage in 2023 and ran for two weeks. In addition to talking about the musicals themselves, the point of this review is to examine the choices made by the creators when they hopped mediums from live stage musicals to internet stage readings, and back again. I think they made a lot of really interesting creative choices when faced with the pandemic, and I don't think all of them were good choices. As someone who had to jump mediums myself with Epithet making its transition from an animated series to the novelized format, I find this topic really interesting. I hope you will too!

Of course, if you are a Starkid fan, you have probably also been waiting for Nerdy Prudes Must Die for years and it would be pretty lame of me to spoil it before it's available to the public on YouTube. Here are the timestamps to help you navigate spoilers.

If you, like me, are a fan of Starkid but have never seen Nightmare Time (most Starkid fans haven't, it's viewcount is like 5% of their musicals), I have put ✅ and ❌ symbols next to the episodes to indicate which ones I think are worth watching. This way you can watch specific ones before I spoil them for you, if you want. Killer Track is easily the best one in my opinion. Honey Queen is also alright. The rest I think are honestly not worth the time investment.

• 15:15 - The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals [SPOILER-FREE]
• 18:53 - Black Friday [SPOILER-FREE]
• 24:50 - Nerdy Prudes Must Die [SPOILER-FREE]
• 31:45 - Spoilers are now allowed
• 32:05 - The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals
• 40:26 - Black Friday
• 1:03:00 - Nightmare Time (Each of the following is a Nightmare Time Episode)
• 1:11:56 - Hatchetfield Ape Man + Watcher World ❌
• 1:19:32 - Forever and Always + Time Bastard ✅
• 1:24:38 - Jane's a Car + The Witch in the Web ❌
• 1:26:46 - Honey Queen ✅
• 1:30:06 - Perky's Buds + Abstinence Camp + Daddy ❌
• 1:33:52 - Killer Track ✅✅✅
• 1:39:41 - Yellow Jacket ✅ + Nightmare Time Wrap-Up
• 1:46:53 - Nerdy Prudes Must Die + Conclusions [SPOILERS]

I actually included small snippets of relevant audio from different songs in this one. This is the first time I've done this. Let me know in the comments if you think it enhances the listening experience, I might consider doing this more often if I have ready access to footage in the future.

Note: The musical I am trying to remember at 17:14 is "The Toxic Avenger". Lenti says that show is very similar to "The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals" and liked both, so if you've seen one, maybe consider checking out the other!