Ok - so Codename Bacon hit me with a two sentence bit of glee about this tribute to Herschell Gordon Lewis' brilliance - and I get all excited. Now, we get the first full length review and it's a nuclear bomb of a bad review. If you can read the following and not die laughing, and then wanting desperately to see the film... well, anyone that states a film is ripping off the brilliant opening of GHOST SHIP... lol, oh man, HIGH-LARRY-US!!! Here ya go...

Hi Harry,

Thanks for the screening tonight! I wish I had a bucket o' great things to say about 2001 Maniacs but man am I steamed! Anyway, here's a really, really bad review should you choose to use it. Please call me Jigganaut if you do. Thanks again!

-J

2001 Maniacs

I’m a horror fan. A die hard one. I proudly accept the good and the bad that goes along with that, the bad being that a majority of the horror films that come out today don’t measure up to the great ones that define the genre. Yet, we are a resilient breed with low expectations and a high tolerance. We’ll stand in line and plop down our money for just about anything hoping to see something we’ve never seen before. Ladies and gentleman, I just got back from the screening of 2001 Maniacs and I can tell you that moment has come.

This is by far the WORST film I have ever seen. People who know me have heard me claim many, many times, “This is the worst horror film I’ve ever seen!” 2001 Maniacs defies genre. It’s simply the most atrocious excuse for any type of legitimate cinema ever projected. Watching this film (in the interest of simplicity I’ll continue calling it a “film”) was like being forced to watch your grandparents have sex...and you have to hold their teeth while they get their smoove on. Let me list the reasons why this film needs to be locked up in a safe and never, ever see the light of day. Where’s Jerry Lewis when you need him?

1) The Guy Who Yells “Action” and “Cut”- From what I could tell, there was no director on this film, certainly not one in the traditional sense. You could never convince me that a grown man who has seen a film in his lifetime created this catastrophe. 2001 Maniacs looks and feels like the kind of folly twelve-year-olds on summer vacation shoot with Dad’s videocamera and force the family to watch. Even then, I think kids who watch movies have an inherent understand of framing, angles, shot composition, eye lines, structure, pacing, performances and storytelling. They may not know them by name, but they know what a movie is supposed to look like. This, my friends doesn’t even look like a movie. It looks like a surrealist nightmare. Forget everything you know about film. You thought Dogma-style was crude? This guy reinvents the medium by disregarding 100 years of film technique and culture. There was no suspense, no thrills, no chills, no talent...’nuff said.

2) The Director of Craptography- Hey buddy, you know why the lens detaches from the camera? So you can use different ones to artistically tell your story. And those lights in the corner? You turn them on so everything isn’t dark and muddy. That thing over there is a dolly. You use it so your shots don’t look like you strapped the camera to a burro and slapped it on the ass. And this is the focus ring...oh, never mind.

3) The Writing?- There’s an urban legend about software that will spit out a feature length script for you if you simply plug in the genre, amount of characters you want and how long you want it to be. The legend lives! There is no other explanation as to how this kind of dialogue could have been created. It’s almost as if someone stole 50 of the most clichéd, asinine sentences from other horrible horror films, threw them into a hat and had the actors blindly pick one and speak it. The humor was DOA. The narrative was non-existent. As abominable as the writing was, you know what made it worse?

4) The Acting- Now, we horror fans are used to not getting the zenith of performances. Most creature features contain a group of untrained, attractive people, many of them willing to take off their clothes and scream incessantly into the night. This cast was awful even by those standards. To be fair, they looked much worse than they probably are because The Guy Who Yells “Action” and “Cut” shoved the camera right up in their faces so much that you actually had to lean back in your seat to get your bearing. Nothing makes a bad line and a stilted performance worse than a great view. An extreme close up is supposed to be the garnish on your plate, not the whole flippin’ meal! For more on this problem, see number one. I will say that Mr. Englund remains the consummate professional. His performance was bar none the best thing in the film. He totally could’ve phoned it in considering but he didn’t. He is the yummy creamy filling in a sh*t-flavored Twinkie.

5) The Not-So-Special Effects- Is there any real excuse for cheesy special fx when Sam Raimi pulled them off so effectively back in 1981? This stuff looked like it was found in the seasonal aisle of your favorite drugstore during the Halloween season. I’m no genius but if you’re going to try to sell your movie as a gore fest, shouldn’t there be tons of gore in your movie? The makeup effects were right out of the old Hammer Films. The CGI stuff? I thought I was watching a rough cut they were so badly matched and off-colored. The ending...I wouldn’t dare spoil it for anyone crazy enough to still want to see this tripe but I will say that it is such a blatant knock-off of the brilliantly executed opening scene of Ghost Ship that it belongs on a blanket on the streets of New York City’s Chinatown next to wrist watches spelled "Rolecks".

6) The Deaditing- This print must have been delivered to the theater on butcher paper because it was hacked and chopped within an inch of its life. This film is so uneven, so devoid of cohesion that one more edit would’ve made it collapse into a million pieces. It feels as if two totally different films, with nothing in common, were spliced together. At times you have no idea what’s going on. There’s a fight sequence towards the end that actually makes you feel dumber as you watch it because you can’t follow it. I kept turning to my date saying, “What just happened?” Either this editor hated the people he was working with or he threw the clips in the air and spliced together the ones that fell closest to the Steenbeck.

7) Production Decline- I wasn’t a big fan of The Village but it had atmosphere. The production design was amazing and you have to give credit where credit is due. The inside of your toilet bowl had more atmosphere than this film. It was supposed to be a small town yet you only saw a farmhouse here and there. There was no ominous sense of danger to these structures. They were plain, ol’ rustic buildings that even the Amish would find boring. No effort was made to make this film even resemble a horror film. It was all bright sunny days and absurdly dark interiors. 2001 Maniacs? I counted 20…maybe. Why take a shot of the entire town gathering if your entire town looks like an AA meeting at the local church?

8) The End Credits- A song and dance number. You heard right. The colorful cast joins in a roaring, behind-the-scenes rendition of the film’s main theme which is played ad nauseum, “The South Will Rise Again.” I guess the filmmakers wanted us to see how much fun the experience was. Let me tell you, there was absolutely nothing fun about that experience. I realize that a majority of the film was tongue and cheek but there’s a fine line between campy and stupid. Ending your horror film with a song is like ending Schindler’s List with bloopers.

Believe it or not, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on but what would be the point. Some of you might be wondering about the story. I’m sure there will be a ton of reviews getting into that. What bugs me most about the screening was the arrogance. How dare these people involve the legendary Fangoria Magazine and Ain’t It Cool News? Did they think that their product was so amazing that it warranted a special screening with partners? On top of that, while I’m waiting outside some codger makes his way down the line telling people that they won’t be allowed into the theater if they have any recording devices of any kind, including camera cellphones. They were worried that someone might want to actually bootleg this film! Had I known what I know now, I would’ve walked up to the ticket desk with an entire film crew.

Call me Jigganaut.

-Oh yeah, the opening titles were cool. There's your bone.

Now for someone that liked the film, but didn't flip, though they do plan to buy it on dvd when it comes out. Here ya go...