After completing final exams a group of college students head to Daytona Beach to celebrate Spring Break, with visions of sex and alcohol dancing in their heads. While crossing through GeorgiaGeorgia reviews, they are met with a crude detour that does not lead them to the land of beach, boobs and beer, but rather to the small town of Pleasant Valley. This little town seems to be frozen in time as there are no televisions, phones, running water or any other technological advances seen over the last 100 years. Even the inhabitants seem to be straight from a casting call of “DeliveranceDeliverance reviews” with more inbred, racist hicks than you can shake a stick at. When they are informed that they are now the guests of honor at the annual Guts and Glory Jubilee celebration, complete with free room and board, food, extremely curvaceous females and more importantly, beer…how could they pass it up? What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty. But we’ll get to that later. 2001 Maniacs2001 Maniacs reviews is the first film out of the Raw Nerve studio, a studio created in part by Cabin FeverCabin Fever reviews director, Eli Roth. Directed by Tim Sullivan, 2001 Maniacs is not really a sequel to the Herschell Gordon Lewis classic 2000 Maniacs, but more of a re-telling or even possibly a continuation. It is a comedy as well and as in the first film, the town in which the teens find themselves in is a cross between the cast of Deliverance, Songsong of the South and Hee Haw. Pleasant Valley is a town stuck in a time BEFORE the Civil WarCivil War reviews and is inhabited by every non-funny Southern cliché character ever put on the big or small screen. Kissing cousins, nubile females with rotten teeth, sheep fuckers, and no-shoe-wearing boys named HuckleBilly who kills cats for fun.

The acting in 2001 Maniacs ranged from capable to atrocious, with a few stand-outs being Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elm StreetA Nightmare on Elm Street reviews) playing the eye-patch wearing Mayor Buckman. He hams it up a bit, and there are some Freddy Krueger-isms mixed in as well, but he seems to be having a good time in the majority of the scenes he is in. Lin Shaye (Dead EndDead End reviews) plays Granny Boone, the kindly, Southern grandmother with something shifty going on behind the eyes, and the character of Harper Alexander, the Southern Charmer, is played with just enough creepy overtones by Guiseppe Andrews (Cabin Fever).

The gore effects are fairly plentiful, varied and handled by KNB EFX and Precinct 13. Keeping with the theme of the film, the killings are done to a mostly comedic effect and no matter what means of death our victims succumb too, they are done in a fashion that are usually wacky and in what one could only assume were the filmmakers attempt at humor. With draw and quartering, decaps, half-caps, crushings, impalings and a decent acid death via a funnel, 2001 Maniacs will not disappoint anyone looking for some gore, even if it seems as if they were sticking to the original film style of serving up the blood and guts with a little bit of cheese.

2001 Maniacs suffers in a few areas that are hard to overlook. The writing is pretty bad. Not that anyone is going to a movie like this for any snippets of enlightenment, but being this is a comedy, some of the dialog should have a shred of actual humor. Chris Kobin drops the ball and for the most part, conversations between the characters are painful and absolutely unbelievable. There is no dialog in this entire film that is original or witty, even in the few scenes in which it COULD have been. Having to suffer through some of the biggest groan inducing, after death one-liners since the James Bond movies doesn’t help this and even makes it more apparent. The only portions of the film that may get a laugh out of you are whenever the Wandering Minstrels (Johnny Legend and Scott Speigel) are shown. These two will follow characters around while singing whatever predicament they may be in. Seeing two hillbillies singing “The boy wants his bitch” to a black man who is looking for his girlfriend is pretty funny.

Another issue is the fact that it seems the makers went the easy route and decided to use some of the most tired, over used Southern characters possible. It is hard to imagine that anyone thought it was actually amusing only because they are the exact same characters seen in every movie in which extreme Southern caricatures are used. The first introduction of a man and his sheep was a tired cliché before he was shown, and does not serve any better the multiple times the gag is used later in the film. The kissing cousins got old FAST and attempting to copy the dueling banjos from Deliverance was as trite and contrived as the misspelled detour sign that got the characters there in the first place. The only other stereotypical redneck character not in this film was the drunk hillbilly character with a corn cob pipe and a jug of moonshine with the ‘XXX’ label on the side sitting with his back against a tree and going “hic”.

Another area this movie could have made its mark was in its obvious attempt to offend, but because of the poor writing, a lot of these attempts fall flat. From gays to blacks, the jokes hit all the racism, incest, bestiality topics. The desire to offend someone was there, but the writing behind the topics kept it from ever really doing so. By the third act, the film has really lost steam as the characters start wandering around the now deserted ‘town’ on their own, and by themselves. It is at this point the film turns into a grade-C slasher film that it never truly recovers from aside from a finale involving a fight with the mayor in front of a fiery backdrop. This scene is also the only notable scene worth mentioning any of Steve Adcock’s cinematography which had up to this point been fairly colorful, yet extremely boring. The music consisted of the previously mentioned Wandering Minstrel tunes and to the delight of the originals fans, the song “The South Will Rise Again“. This song is later bastardized into an industrial version that is pretty close to un-listenable.

2001 Maniacs is not a film to stay away from, necessarily. If you have seen the original, and liked it, you may find some enjoyment with what this film tries to deliver. If you are a fan of any type of slasher film, then you would probably be able to absorb all of the things you come to expect from films like this, even if it is a tad disappointing when realizing what could have been done if some of the key areas had been in more capable hands. On the plus side, 2001 Maniacs does have a decent opening credits sequence, a couple of decent kills and a creepy scene involving the removal of an eye patch. It also doesn’t hurt that the good looking cast do not mind removing clothing. Cabin Fever fans may also be pleased to see the characters of Dr. Mambo and Justin make an appearance early in the film.

Rating:

Share

2001 Maniacs - 2005 - More Information

Director: Tim Sullivan
Writer: Chris Kobin
Actors: Robert Englund, Lin Shaye, Giuseppe Andrews, Jay Gillespie, Marla Malcolm
Genre: Horror - Dark Humor
MPAA: Rated R for strong horror violence and gruesome images, sexuality/nudity and language.
Company: Bloodworks

Well what do you know - this product is available in our Amazon Crime Lab! If you were thinking of not stealing it, buy it from us and help out the site in the process. You'll sleep better. Check out other related items at Amazon or items in our Amazon Store. If we have reviewed it, and it is available via Amazon, it'll be in there.