|
 t
makes sense that Eli Roth, director of "Cabin
Fever" (and more recently the box office
hit "Hostel") is one of the producers of
Tim Sullivan's "2001 Maniacs".
Sullivan's movie and Roth's first film share much
in common, including an abundance of gore and
heavy doses of wacky comedy and odiously generic
characters that you wouldn't mind seeing dead in
cruel and inhumane ways. And it's precisely for
those reasons that you should love Sullivan's film
-- it is gleeful in its sadism, hilarious in its
gags, and blissfully entertaining from beginning
to end, clocking in at a fast 87 minute running
time plus opening and end credits. The film is
just long enough to hit all the splatter and
jokes, but never long enough to bore.
"2001 Maniacs"
follows the usual formula, with punkish college
kids on their way to
Daytona Beach
in
Florida
for Spring Break. (Fans of TV's "Prison
Break" will get a kick out of Peter
Stormare's quick cameo as an exasperated college
professor in the beginning.) Along the way, our
Spring Breakers run across 3 like-minded
"teens", and together they eventually
end up in the small, out-of-the-way town called
Pleasant
Valley
, which seems to be stuck in time circa 1860s. The
mayor of the town, played by an excellent Robert
Englund, declares the Spring Breakers the town's
guests of honor. A free meal, room and board, and
a gaggle of slutty Southern women convince the
boys and their new friends to stay. But of course
this is no ordinary town, and soon the kids start
disappearing one by one. It seems that the Spring
Breakers aren't just invited to dinner, they are
dinner.
To be sure, you would have to
be one of those people who find Sam Raimi's "Evil
Dead" movies to be a masterpiece in order
to fully appreciate what Tim Sullivan is going for
here. And having liked Raimi's works, as well as
Roth's "Cabin Fever" a great deal, it's
not very difficult for me to consider Sullivan's
"2001 Maniacs" another fine entry into a
genre in desperate need of rejuvenation. The
characters are overtly stereotypical, from the
black motorcyclist and his leather-clad Chinese
(though she doesn't look very Chinese) girlfriend,
to the Southerners themselves (a running gag
involves a man and his sheep), and right down to
the Spring Breakers.
Right from the start, it's
immediately made clear that "2001
Maniacs" is anything but an exercise in
original screenwriting, and it is obvious Sullivan
and co-writer Chris Kobin could care less about
re-inventing the wheel. As with Roth's films,
"2001 Maniacs" oozes unbridled giddiness
that is easy to get into. The film, simply put,
begs not to be taken seriously. To do so would be
ridiculous and unhealthy, as the sight of genre
vet Lin Shaye running about in a Southern Belle
dress and wielding a meat cleaver should certainly
attest. Plus, approaching "2001 Maniacs"
from any other angle besides resigned acceptance
of the film's ludicrous nature would only
interfere with the movie's overall entertainment
value.
If there is such a thing as a
point, then the point of "2001 Maniacs"
seems to be how much blood and severed bodyparts
Sullivan, a former special effects man himself,
can throw at the screen and get away with. If it
isn't obvious by now, the film is very bloody,
with torn limbs and gushy decapitations aplenty.
Sullivan certainly isn't shy about the gore, all
of it done in jubilant, over-the-top fashion. The
film is also amusing throughout despite a long,
drawn out final 10 minutes. The film really should
have ended 10 minutes earlier, with the mystery of
the townspeople left for the viewer to guess. The
clues are all there; did we really need a point
and click narration of
Pleasant
Valley
's origins?
What's there to be said about
the film's cast? They're all generic stereotypes,
from the handsome hero to the beautiful blonde
heroine, who of course spends most of the movie in
midriff bearing clothes because, well, it's a
movie made after the year 2000, and all attractive
females in horror movies need to bear their
midriff. It's a Teen Horror Movie law. The Spring
Breakers are your usual horny lot, the kind that
doesn't engender sympathy as the townspeople start
hacking them up for dinner. Not that Sullivan ever
tries to make them sympathetic. In possibly a
first for the genre, leading lady Marla Malcolm
actually takes off her top in a sex scene.
"2001 Maniacs" is a
solid genre effort, with more than enough pluses
to warrant an enthusiastic recommendation for
those interested in the genre. The film will not
appeal to anyone unfamiliar with its cult
inspirations, for the simple reason that it's a
movie made by people who thrives in their
obsessive devotion to horror filmmaking. And if
you like splatter, all the better. Who knew you
could come up with so many groovy ways to kill a
horny Spring Breaker?
|
