Butcher Block is a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films and the minds behind them. Dedicated to graphic gore and splatter, each week will explore the dark, the disturbed, and the depraved in horror, and the blood and guts involved. For the films that use special effects of gore as an art form, and the fans that revel in the carnage, this series is for you.

Horror sequels are supposed to be bigger and better than their predecessor in every way. When it comes to slashers, a sequel is expected to top the body count and creativity in kills. Adam Green’s follow up to his 2006 love letter to slashers not only handily doubles the kill count with an expanded cast, but doubles the gallons of blood spilled and triples the gore. While the original trilogy could be played out back to back in one continuous, fluid narrative, it’s Hatchet II that earns the blood-soaked distinction of most gruesome kills.

Picking up immediately where Hatchet left off, with Marybeth Dunstan (now played by Danielle Harris) fighting off and escaping Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder) only to return to Reverend Zombie’s (Tony Todd) shop for answers. Cue a ragtag team assembly for Marybeth and Zombie’s return to the swamps, both for very different reasons. Green injects a dizzying amount of horror cameos before the cast is set loose in the swamp to become Crowley fodder; Marcus Dunstan (Saw IV, The Collector), Lloyd Kaufman (President of Troma Entertainment), Mike Mendez (the Gravedancers, Big Ass Spider!), Dave Parker (The Hills Run Red), and more. Director Tom Holland (Fright Night, Child’s Play) joins the cast in a larger role as Marybeth’s uncle.

Director and special effects artist John Carl Buechler also returns for one gnarly death, in which his character Jack Cracker gives aid to Marybeth only to lose his head by way of strangulation from his own intestines shortly after. With the same makeup crew returning for this sequel, Buechler handed special makeup effects reigns over to Robert Pendergraft, knowing Pendergraft was well prepared to head the makeup effects team. For a sequel with 17 on-screen kills and double the 50 gallons of blood used in the first film, Pendergraft more than delivered.

Victor Crowley dismembers and maims his way through the larger cast, with faces getting lobbed off and jaws being ripped from their hinges (a memorable Joe Lynch cameo), the makeup and special effects team had their work cut out for them. The scene in which Crowley takes a chainsaw to the genitals of two victims at once, splicing them from groin to skull, meant that no one on screen or behind the lens was safe from the massive blood spray that the effects team rigged.

With so many insane kills, from intestinal decapitations to belt sander skull shaving, how do you deliver a memorable finale? A showdown between horror giants Hodder and Todd, as their characters battle for swamp supremacy, of course. The Rev. Zombie’s death is the most over the top demise worthy of a Mortal Kombat fatality. It’s of course this gruesome death and many others that drew the ire of the MPAA, granting the sequel an NC-17 rating. AMC backed the film, getting it placed in limited, unrated theatrical release, but by weekend’s end it was pulled.

Trimming any of the glorious makeup and special effects that Pendergraft and his team created would have been a shame; Crowley’s kills are the best part of the series. The level of cartoonish violence on display is so tongue-in-cheek fun, and that it was handled via practical effects in an age where practical effects is a rarity meant even more to celebrate. Whether you’re team Victor Crowley or not, it’s hard not to root for a practical effect driven bloodbath.