Sunday, January 20, 2008

2001 Maniacs

I saw Herschell Gordon Lewis's "2000 Maniacs" a loooooong time ago. I can't say I thought it was a great movie at the time although I certainly got a kick out of it. There's a weird technicolor glee to the whole thing that was a complete about face from most brooding castle-horrors of the Hammer era.

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"2000 Maniacs" was kinky, slapstick horror, leaning closer to Ed Wood's style than Alfred Hitchcock's but there's an undeniable charm to the low budget thrills of the piece and, honestly, the idea of a Southern time rising from the dead to kill wandering northerners is actually pretty clever. It's really most memorable for its creative kills -- the man being rolled down the hill in a barrel driven through with nails sticks out but there's also a woman smashed by a rock as part of a carnival game that I personally found particularly charming. While it does still feel like homemade porno the sort of 60's movie musical look makes for a memorable horror movie, to say the least.

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It's also interesting to notice that in "2000 Maniacs" the victims are all middle-aged. This was before dead teenagers took over the slasher genre, around the time of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" ten years later.

Jump ahead about twenty years and I'm wandering the local Blockbuster trying to find four flicks to cash in on the standard '4 for $20' deal and I saw this box:

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Now, of course, I'm a sucker for anything with Robert Englund and at five bucks I couldn't pass up the deal.

"2001 Maniacs" is a blast, my friends, as big a blast as you can have watching a horror flick. Is it frightening? Well, no, not really. It's slapstick horror, the gore's the punchline and every character is clearly in on the joke. That's not to say it's a 'wink wink' sort of comedy, not at all. Look good satire the characters sell the story to the moutaintops, treating even the most cheesy and irresistable comic moments like they're Shakespeare.

The premise is basically the same: northerners wander too far south and end up in Pleasant Valley, the final resting place of the Maniacs who bring their town to life for the pruported purpose of putting on an annual festival, which is nothing but a backdrop for them to ceremoniously massacre their guests. Unlike the original, the victims here are all college kids on the way to Spring Break. Also in the original, which was made in 1964, the Maniacs are avenging the 100th anniversary of their town being wiped out. In 2001, there's no such specific historical parallel.

The northern characters are stereotypical frat kids, bordering on the irritating, which is good because we'll ultimately be happy to see most of them get killed. The guys especially come off annoying but, well, frat-boy twenty something guys inherently come off annoying, don't they?

The Maniacs are drawn far broader, chewing their Southern scenery with aplomb. Robert Englund leads the way as Mayor Buckman, the brains beinh Pleasant Valley. Southern stereotypes are all over the place and the jokes go right after the obvious: kissing cousins, in-breeding, bestiality, a black guy offering watermelon. It goes for the angle of being SO obvious that it would be impossible to be offended as the filmmakers and performers are clearly not only in on the jokes, but relishing in them.

What happens next is what always happens in movies like this: people start splitting up and people start getting killed. Much like the original, the kills are more about being visually inventive and funny than they are there to be chilling. A girl is drawn and quartered by four horses, a guy chokes on a beer bong laced with acid, a guy meets his demise at the end of steel teeth, hell, a gay guy even gets a spear rammed right up his ass and out his mouth, the black guy is smashed by the world's largest cotton gin (at least he doesn't die first!)

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Again, it's all for kicks and giggles.

My biggest regret is that my favorite girl dies first. Man, I HATE it when that happens. Alas, poor Kat, I hardly knew ye.

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The movie does something cool in the final act though -- when it gets to the climax the movie does darken a bit (in the first lengthy night scene, which I doubt is a coincidence.) Suddenly the cartoony villains of Pleasant Valley shriek forth with their truly terrifing origin story. We do tend to ignore how horrific an event Sherman's March probably was but for a few minutes the characters of Pleasant Valley relive that terror and blow it back in our faces. It's a bit over-the-top but it's a cool move on the filmmaker's part to believe that they can deliver something so serious after the first hour that was so much a romp.

Is "2001 Maniacs" great horror or a great movie? Not in the classical sense, no. There are some tone problems and some effects are great while a couple are distractingly less well done. The script, especially the more casual dialogue amongst the protagonists, isn't always particularly well done and a couple performances bring it down a bit further. But, overall, the actors and characters are pretty and likeable and the bad guys are so damn charming that it's tough to resist the ride.

I'm not sure "2001 Maniacs" will convert someone who hates this sort of thing to its cause. Still, for people maybe tired of the somber dirge that much horror has become of late on the big screen, this movie harkens to a different time when there was more to horror and gore movies than just disgusting people. And it also reminds us that sometimes the best way to set-up a dramatic finale isto have a lot of laughs in the build-up.

A sequel "2001 Maniacs: Beverly Hellbillies" is in production and I really can't wait for it to hit the streets.

If only they could bring Kat back one more time. Just for me :)

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