The almighty Hershell Gordon-Lewis already promised us through a very catchy song that the South was going to rise again... and it did! Slightly more than forty years after the Godfather of Gore's terrific splatter-classic, energetic director Tim Sullivan gathered quite an impressive cast and updated Lewis' screenplay with new gory sickness and nowadays sleaze 'n swearing! I'm usually not this enthusiastic when it comes to remakes of classic horror films, but "2001 Maniacs" simply is a fun & unpretentious little movie that clearly intended to please horror fans first, rather than to hit big at the box office. The original story is preserved, as a whole bunch of young party animals on their way to the Southern beaches are detoured the peculiar little town of Pleasant Valley where they're given a warm reception as honoree guests to a local jubilee. The townsfolk, with one-eyed mayor Buckman in charge, all soon turn out to be deranged killers that are still very rancorous about the Southern Civil War casualties and, one by one, the Yankee tourists are butchered in very imaginative ways. Some of the killings are strangely similar to the ones in Lewis' original, some of them are completely new...but they ALL are utterly grotesque and exhilaratingly gross! Whenever there isn't any gore on display, we're treated to absurd dialogues, morbid jokes and – oh yeah – loads of naked flesh supplied by the most ravishing babes of nowadays horror flicks. Of course, purely talking cinema, this isn't much of good film because it totally lacks tension and it's tasteless, offensive and completely ridiculous. Personally I couldn't care less about this because A) you pretty much know what to expect here and B) it's a splendid throwback to the rancid 60's and 70's; the times when horror cinema didn't necessarily had to justify its exploitative tendencies. Robert Englund clearly hasn't had this much fun portraying a mad character than since the original "Nightmare on Elm Street" and Lin Shaye once again proves she's a sadly underrated but great actress that delivers no matter how silly her lines are. The younger cast members perform adequately and Sullivan's directing is fairly surefooted as well. Although the additional maniac in the title never really gets introduced, I suppose it relates to the little silent girl who dissects rats for fun. "2001 Maniacs" is one of the most entertaining horror films of the past couple of years and I recommend it highly!

Initially I tried 2001 Maniacs because the horror master Robert Englund was the star and plastered all over the cover. I should have known that with the exception of playing the infamous Freddy Kreuger Englund's other attempts at horror have fell flat (The Phantom of The Opera, Python, Dance Macabre and so on.) I will say however that I have NO doubt that 2001 Maniacs will thrive as a cult classic and somehow it will most certainly find an audience with horror fans who love complete camp, and utter stupidity and over the top ridiculously humorous death scenes. The film was made with not horror in made but silly stupid blood splattering, breast baring type of slasher flick. And it just doesn't work for this one.

Robert Englund does a decent job as Mayor Buckman, the ghost Mayor a small town wiped out during the civil war. Now he leads his town folk back to the living to get vengeance on anyone who happens into their town. Englund is appropriately deranged although he doesn't directly do much if any of the killing. He is definitely a figure head and used as such but he is one of the better campier characters. Jay Gillespie plays the lead college student who gets him and his friends stuck in this town of horror. He is appropriately handsome and typical for the part and does a decent job being the hero of the story. Gina Marie Heekin, Brian Gross, Mushond Lee, and Bianca Smith I think are all the actors that play the other doomed college students looking for a good time but get picked off one by one due to the usual stupidity like promiscuous sex, following the wrong person to the wrong place and so on. I will give kudos to Lin Shaye, a veteran actress who plays Granny Boone, the horrendously disturbed matriarch of this town who likes to fry up some of her killings and eat them. I saw Shaye recently in the spectacular horror film Dead End and she really does a great job in this film. Wendy Kremer, Ryan Fleming, and Giuseppe Andrews all play main role Maniacs in the film and their characters are great...hilarious, campy, and completely deranged.

So with a cast that is decent and characters that are funny, campy and horrific what is so wrong with this movie?? Story, script, setting, BORING!! It wasn't believable for a second and I know horror films don't have to be but at the same there should be some sort of sense to it. There was absolutely NO reason that these 6 kids would stay in this completely out of the way, no power, no modern appliances little village when they were on their way to Daytona. On top of that there was ZERO suspense, and the death scenes which in a slasher/horror flick should be original, gory, even maybe a little realistic were so stupid they did nothing but cause eye rolls. It is really a shame considering the originality of the cast and killers and what they had was potential for a real series here. Director and co-writer Tim Sullivan slapped together something that felt more like a teenagers class film project and none of it worked. You didn't care about any of them and it was just boring. The nudity, which in horror films is always blatant and overused, was so forced that it was annoying...and I mean hey it's nudity but still it just all BORED ME. I would only suffice to say that this film is only for the true campy horror fan who will probably love the way it was done. If you're just the average movie goer you're gonna think this is stupid and a waste of time and probably give it far less than what I gave it credit for. 4/10

A motley assortment of college kids on a cross country road trip take an ill-advised detour and find themselves in the quaint Southern hamlet of Pleasant Valley. They run afoul of the crazed cannibal local yokels who are celebrating their annual barbecue festival. Director/co-writer Tim Sullivan does a real bang-up job with this wickedly sick and twisted blackly humorous remake of the Herschell Gordon Lewis schlock splatter classic: Sullivan relates the story at a nonstop zippy pace, ably creates an amusing tongue-in-cheek tone (the witty "Deliverance" dueling banjos parody is quite funny),and pours on the gruesome gore with infectiously demented glee (grisly highlights include a hapless lass being quartered by horses, a guy drinking acid, a girl getting crushed by a huge bell, one poor dude having his privates eaten by a hick chick with sharp steel teeth, and a nasty double decapitation with barbed wire). Better still, several hot babes take off their clothes and bare their beautiful bodies. Why, we even got plenty of saucy sexual perversion going on that runs the gamut from bestiality to incestuous lesbianism (the latter thanks to a delectable distaff pair of literal "kissin' cousins"). Moreover, the game cast totally go to town on their roles. Robert Englund in particular has a field day as the jolly one-eyed Mayor Buckman. Lin Shayne as the sweetly insane Granny Boone, Giuseppe Andrews as the suavely deranged gentleman Harper Alexander, Scott Spiegel and Johnny Legend as a couple of merry singing minstrels, Wendy Kremer as wildcat hillbilly harlot Peaches, Bill McKinney as an unhinged chef, Travis Tritt as a creepy gas station attendant, Eli Roth as wacky stoner Justin, and Peter Stormare as the stuffy Professor Ackerman all likewise have a grand time with their parts. Steve Adcock's polished cinematography and Jonathan McHugh's spooky, flavorsome score do the trick just nice. A refreshingly gross and tasteless blast of a blithely depraved over-the-top comedic horror romp.