Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

2001 Maniacs Blu-ray Movie Review

The South rises again.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 11, 2010

Does anyone still go to drive-in movies? Are there even any drive-ins to go to anymore? Once it was an American ritual to load the family into the car on a Friday or Saturday night, and head off to the nearest outdoor cineplex, which in those days meant a wavy-asphalted parking lot with bizarre tin speakers (which, remarkably, produced a very tinny noise) which you could hang on the driver’s side window. You had to wait until after sundown for the feature to get started, and even then the image could fade off into the waning evening light. And of course there was always the idiot who would either turn on his headlights or honk his horn at inopportune times. Ah, the memories. The other ritual associated with drive-ins was, of course, the date movie. What could be better than just two young lovers cuddled up in the front seat (hey, this is a family site!), watching a classic film? Or, perhaps, a “splatter film” like 1964’s Two Thousand Maniacs, films which mixed outré humor and horror, all designed to get that squeamish girl a little closer to her erstwhile protector boyfriend. The name Herschell Gordon Lewis is probably not that familiar to a lot of readers, but he is credited with founding the “splatter film” genre, and one of his most fondly remembered films was indeed Two Thousand Maniacs. In 2005, director Tim Sullivan approached the material with a post-modern eye and came up with 2001 Maniacs, a film which preserves the nutty over the top drive-in style of the original while injecting a liberal dose of decidedly more recent teen sex angles than a 1964 audience would have tolerated. It’s hard to disparage a film which is so deliberately silly, and if taken in the proper context, 2001 Maniacs, while no masterpiece, is an enjoyable little romp that manages to carve out (pun intended) enough punchlines to at least partially negate any lingering qualms about a somewhat “not ready for prime time” feeling the film and cast generate.

Robert Englund heads the welcoming committee.

(Note: It’s well nigh impossible to discuss this film without giving away major plot points. So if you’re opposed to spoilers, I suggest you skip to the video, audio and supplement sections and forego the rest of this review.)

Anyone who has suffered through a poor community theater production of Lerner and Loewe’s venerable musical Brigadoon has experienced their own personal sort of figurative horror show, but it was Lewis’ odd genius which saw the potential for an actual, honest to badness literal horror show in the idea of a ghost town which resurrects itself intermittently. If in Brigadoon the motive is love (even unintendedly so), in both Two Thousand Maniacs and this “new, improved” version it’s vengeance. (I must pause for a moment to share a very funny anecdote—if perhaps only for a select few—about Brigadoon, if only tangentially. A site devoted to Broadway chat had a contest a few years ago where readers were asked to combine two musical titles and come up with a tag line uniting the two. My favorite, which is brilliant if you catch the references, was: “Brigadoonesbury—once every 100 years, Elizabeth Swados writes a hit musical, and this one is it!”)

Pleasant Valley may seem like a bucolic southern backwater getting ready for its traditional country jubilee, but clues are there for those paying attention, which of course does not include any of our main teenaged characters. First of all, the celebration is called “Guts and Glory,” which might set the more prescient among the teens to thinking, that is if they had half a brain. Also, the frenetic, slightly spooky Mayor Buckman (Robert Englund of Freddy Krueger fame) wears a Confederate flag eye patch, for example. And Granny Boone (Lin Shaye) seems like an antiquated Antebellum version of some dilapidated gothic heroine from the fevered pen of Tennessee Williams.

Suffice it to say that the odd assortment of teens, all supposedly on their way to Florida for spring break, end up in Pleasant Valley due to an unavoidably placed detour. Raging hormones seal the deal when the boys like not only the buxom beauties native to the village, but also a couple of the females who show up in another car. Can anything other than death and mayhem come from this burgeoning sexuality? Of course not.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that character after character in 2001 Maniacs is going to meet a horrific end. What helps elevate, if ever so slightly, this film above the trite and true splatter run of the mill is its completely off kilter sense of humor. Political correctness isn’t just jettisoned, it’s downrighted vaulted into the neighboring nightmarish county, one where no doubt Jessica Simpson is plying her trade as Daisy Duke. 2001 Maniacs literally celebrates adolescent humor, with one gratuitous “pussy” joke (some not even involving cats) after another, and a series of sexcapades ending in tragedy for at least one of the partners. Sullivan and his co-scenarist Chris Kobin take no prisoners, gender wise or even racially. Everyone is fair game for their juvenile antics and gruesome death scenes. To say no one makes it out alive from 2001 Maniacs may be summing up the film nice and neatly, but it doesn’t give much idea of the lunatic frenzy which accompanies each character’s demise, something Sullivan funnily nicknames "splat-stick" (as opposed to slapstick) in one of the commentaries included on this Blu-ray.

Englund is obviously having a ball here, as is Shaye. They both are Grade A Prime Ham, working their ridiculous material to the hilt. If the younger cast members are probably not going to be taking home any Oscars anytime soon, they all have the earnest and energetic quality which is a hallmark of true drive-in acting “excellence”. Sullivan stages the silliness with panache and more than a casual wink, not only at the genre itself, but at this very film in particular. In fact, one of 2001 Maniacs’ saving graces is its resolute insistence that it not take itself seriously.

2001 Maniacs plays like a typical splatter film, albeit one with a completely outré sense of humor, and it doesn’t really try to hide the putative “big twist” coming at the end of the film. Even Sullivan discounts the “surprise” as a sort of faux-Twilight Zone denouement, and it gives a certain crazed logic to what has gone on before, but I seriously doubt it’s going to be of Sixth Sense magnitude to anyone who has an inkling of Screenwriting 101. What again saves this film is the mad and manic coda, which provides one last fitting punchline to the whole shenanigans, and one which, incidentally, raises the specter of another classic musical. You’ll have to watch the film to find out which one it is.

2001 Maniacs Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Eli Roth waxes enthusiastic about Tim Sullivan's love for the horror genre in one of the extras on this Blu-ray, saying that Sullivan loves a horror film if it cost $100,000 or $100 million. If those two amounts are taken as extremes on a scale, one would have to assume that 2001 Maniacs' budget came in considerably closer to the first figure than to the second, so that must be taken into consideration when assessing this Blu-ray's AVC encoded 1080p image, delivered in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. This is frankly an often pretty cheap looking affair, as befits its drive-in ethos, so anyone expecting state of the art visuals is going to be sorely disappointed. Colors are decent enough, if never as over the top as the material might warrant, but the lasting impression of this Blu-ray is one of a pretty soft and fuzzy image, also marred by inconsistent contrast and black levels, making a lot of the darker scenes hazy at best. Outdoor, brightly lit scenes fare best, with good to very good detail and well saturated color.

2001 Maniacs Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

2001 Maniacs' DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is a good sight (or hear, as the case may be) better than the image, sharp (no pun intended) and clear with a variety of well positioned foley effects throughout the many slash, dash, crush and explode sequences which signal any given character's demise. The bright metallic sound of knives, redolent of none other than Freddy Krueger, dots this soundtrack with a quicksilver shininess, neat high frequency squeals of impended terror. LFE gets a somewhat lesser workout, kicking in mostly to support sounds like motorcycles and car engines. Dialogue is clear and clean, and there are some occasional nice ambient environmental effects which perk up the many outdoor scenes. Fidelity is excellent throughout the film and dynamic range is also very good.

2001 Maniacs Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

A severed handful or so of good to excellent extras supplement the main feature. They include:

• Two Commentaries, both quite enjoyable, one with Sullivan and Englund, and the oter with Sullivan, co-writer Kobin, and co-producer Christopher Tuffin. It would have been fun to have also had co-producer Eli Roth (who has a cameo in the film itself) involved in one of these.
• 27 (count 'em) Alternate and Extended Scenes (SD; 37:13), including a whole new prologue featuring director John Landis doing his best to "act".
• Inside the Asylum (SD; 42:26), a decent behind the scenes look at the film, with some extended interview segments with cast and crew.
• Audition Reel (SD; 6:36) a pretty sad and embarrassing document of the younger cast members attempting to read and chew gum at the same time.
  
  

  2001 Maniacs Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 
  

  

  2001 Maniacs may not be Art, or even art, but it's often laugh out loud funny and is just silly-stupid enough to appeal to even jaded, over the hill types like myself. The "twist" isn't very surprising, but a lot of the goofy humor is, and the entire film breezes by with nary a deep thought in its spectral brain. Recommended.