The Age of Commercialism

People are voting emotionally.

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

2001 MANIACS is a cheesy B-movie remake of a cult H. G. Wells gore film of the 1960s entitled 2000 MANIACS. This is a low budget production, packed to the brim with rubbery gore effects and a hammy turn from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET star Robert Englund, and yet despite (or maybe because of) all this it turns out to be a surprisingly enjoyable little movie.I think the film works because the tone is just right. There's a ton of black comedy here, some of it blacker than black (like when the black guy turns up in the southern town asking where black guys hang around, and the locals point him to the nearest lynching tree). The story is relatively fast-paced, and you can be sure that there will be a grisly murder just around the next corner.The acting is less impressive, and some of the characters are just a little TOO over the top (yes, even in a film like this) but yet it somehow hangs together. It's clear that Englund is having a ball as the demented town mayor and there are cameos from Peter Stormare and Eli Roth as the story progresses. None of it is scary or disturbing, but it is funny in places and it's certainly miles better than the amateurish original.

Nobody can imitate the fiendish charm that comes with everything cult director Herschell Gordon Lewis touches, but this movie seems more than willing to give it a try anyway. It's all there: the cartoonish gore, the delightfully sinister story, the gratuitous nudity, the ridiculously hammy acting, it's pretty much the best exploitation movie 2005 can hand you. It may lack that ugly, grainy 60s film stock, but trust me it still looks low-budget enough. The pace is pretty good and the build-up is nicely written, though it is kinda weird that the first kill to me is the best/funniest. All of them are good, but the coolest one they came up with is already used fifteen minutes in. Speaking of weird, the supposed Southern belles that still live in the 1800s all look like Playboy models, which is distracting in more ways than one. One even had fake nails for God's sake, doesn't make too much sense. And what's with that Chinese character? Most horror movies at least get Asian actors so they're close enough, here they just use a Caucasian actress and say she's Chinese about five times a minute. Heck, they'll believe it eventually. None of this bothers me too much though. "2001 Maniacs" is a lot of gory fun, but obviously it's still no "Two Thousand Maniacs".

Recap: It's spring break and everyone is headed for Florida. Anderson and his friends just got a ultimatum from their professor though. They have to redo their term paper on the civil war, or they will be expelled. And they have to turn them in by the end of spring break. However, party first, school later and they head for Florida. But they get lost on the way and end up in Pleasant Valley, population 2001. And they are just about to have their "Guts and G(l)ory Jubilee". Along with a few other outsiders they take up the mayors offer to stay, but soon something seems to be very, very wrong.Comments: I caught this late on a movie channel, and almost directly wished I hadn't. But that happens when you confuse Matthew Carey with Matthew Perry and expect a harmless comedy. My mistake. This is certainly not the type of comedy that Matthew Perry usually end up in. This is the kind of movie where Robert Englund plays the mayor (and the TV guide had left his name out, gee thanks.). So this is a slasher movie, still not sure if comedy applies, even if the guides says so.Sure, not exactly what I expected but it is sometimes at those times you find those rare gems. This is certainly not one of those times. This is for teenage boys, and most probably also written by teenage boys. Blood, gore are literally brutally mixed with lingerie, nudity, breasts and girls kissing. And basically that is all there is. Just a lot of it. No real jokes, no suspense. Just blood and sex. Yuk. So if you have grown up above the mental age of thirteen, leave it alone. By the way, leave it alone anyway.I can't believe they got Peter Stormare to do a small part in this. Fortunately for my faith in him he only appears a few minutes at the beginning and hopefully didn't know what the rest was about. If you hadn't figured it out already, I didn't like it at all. In fact this is one of very few movie I can't see any time or place it would work. It is one of the few I recommend people to stay absolutely clear of (incidentally, and no offence to him, it is not the first which stars Englund). Don't watch it. There are a lot of things that's better to do with your time. Like bringing it out with the garbage…2/10

2001 Maniacs the remake isn't a movie. It is a post-movie. It is as developed as an 88 minute Capitol One commercial, and the only thing it sells is the theoretical algorithm of what defines a good time to a certain consumer demographic.The overall structure, plot, pacing, dialog, and format of 2001 Maniacs could have been inputed by a machine based on the specific formulas of similar movies (Bordello of Blood, Dusk Till Dawn). 2001 Maniacs then reflects the camp aspect of slasher/gore movies, yet some integral part is missing. It isn't that 2001 Maniacs has no heart or soul, it simply wasn't programmed to have heart or soul in the first place. 2001 Maniacs follows the sad trend of most genre (and mainstream) films these days, of trying to imitate the nature of a narrative film. The structure is then reinforced through nothing but shear will of the audience, who has consumed the same tired formula so many times before they now can essentially beg for the same old bone on command.Yet 2001 Maniacs is more than just this: it is not simply a bad movie that is neither funny or scary. It is nothing. It is a black hole, so mediocre it produces no emotions in its watcher. Or rather it produces in the watcher the vacant gaze of catatonic enjoyment one simulates when watching a commercial, this movie imitation's closest relative.A scary thing indeed.