Movie Reviews: 2001 Maniacs
I like watching movies. Every movie teaches you something about the world that you hadn't known before. For example - if I hadn't seen all those American movies, I'd never would have known that all Southerners are extremely religious (although in a very unorthodox way), they all have funny accents, live in small and isolated villages where everyone screws everyone including the nearest relatives, they just LOVE anal sex (pigs and sheep are preferred, but sometimes a common man can do the job), their favorite meal is human flesh, and of course - they instantly kill everyone that comes to their village.
I don't know why, but it seems that people from the south are constantly being demonized, movie by movie, for decades. When you make a list of all bad guys from American movies, Southerners would be fighting a tight battle with Russians for the first place, followed closely by Arabian terrorists and, more recently, Serbs.
Now that we got that out of the way, let's concentrate on the movie itself. For some reason, I'm extremely fond of movies where a small group of people stumbles upon a peaceful and quite village with lots and lots of nice people, only to discover that those nice people bang sheep, kill people and serve their meet for dinner. This is one prime example of that type. Movies like this, when done correctly, often manage to create a good one-against-everyone atmosphere and a feeling of hopelessness. Sure, we all know that our heroes are going to get a chance to get out, only to die a horrible death in a bizarre and shocking last scene. But nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, I simply love that type.
What separates this movie from its siblings is its weirdness. It's not your average "these-people-are-crazy-we-have-to-get-out" movie. It's an almost non-stop parade of superultracheesy one-liners ("It's Ricky on a sticky!"), totally pointless sex scenes (unfortunately, most of them are pretty short and are always somehow interrupted, but you get to see almost all major female characters naked), some of the most inventive killings I've seen recently and, what's most important, the completely laid-back attitude, like "Hey, we're killing tons of people in most brutal and sadistic way, isn't that cool?". Even from the other side of the screen you could feel complete lack of sympathy for the victims by the filmmakers, even enjoyment when someone is knocked off. Every single death is followed by a sarcastic remark from the killer and generally everyone in the village is very happy and totally insane. The whole movie could be described as singing, dancing, sex, killing, more singing and dancing, more killing, more singing and dancing, more sex and killing, etc. It can hardly be called a horror movie - EXTREMELY black comedy is probably a better description.
So, anyway, this movie is highly recommended. It is so overblown (intentionally) in its weirdness, you don't see it very often. A small flaw is that near the end it gets an unnecessary supernatural conclusion, but we can live with it.
By the way, it seems to be a remake of a movie called Two Thousand Maniacs. I haven't seen that one (or even heard about that), so you won't find a comparison here. I'm still wondering whether this movie was made by a Yankee who hates Southerners and wants to show them as retarded pig-screwing murderistic cannibals, or by a pissed-off Southerner who got fed up with all that South-bashing propaganda and decided to kill as many Yankees as he could in most imaginitive ways without going to prison for that.
I don't know why, but it seems that people from the south are constantly being demonized, movie by movie, for decades. When you make a list of all bad guys from American movies, Southerners would be fighting a tight battle with Russians for the first place, followed closely by Arabian terrorists and, more recently, Serbs.
Now that we got that out of the way, let's concentrate on the movie itself. For some reason, I'm extremely fond of movies where a small group of people stumbles upon a peaceful and quite village with lots and lots of nice people, only to discover that those nice people bang sheep, kill people and serve their meet for dinner. This is one prime example of that type. Movies like this, when done correctly, often manage to create a good one-against-everyone atmosphere and a feeling of hopelessness. Sure, we all know that our heroes are going to get a chance to get out, only to die a horrible death in a bizarre and shocking last scene. But nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, I simply love that type.
What separates this movie from its siblings is its weirdness. It's not your average "these-people-are-crazy-we-have-to-get-out" movie. It's an almost non-stop parade of superultracheesy one-liners ("It's Ricky on a sticky!"), totally pointless sex scenes (unfortunately, most of them are pretty short and are always somehow interrupted, but you get to see almost all major female characters naked), some of the most inventive killings I've seen recently and, what's most important, the completely laid-back attitude, like "Hey, we're killing tons of people in most brutal and sadistic way, isn't that cool?". Even from the other side of the screen you could feel complete lack of sympathy for the victims by the filmmakers, even enjoyment when someone is knocked off. Every single death is followed by a sarcastic remark from the killer and generally everyone in the village is very happy and totally insane. The whole movie could be described as singing, dancing, sex, killing, more singing and dancing, more killing, more singing and dancing, more sex and killing, etc. It can hardly be called a horror movie - EXTREMELY black comedy is probably a better description.
So, anyway, this movie is highly recommended. It is so overblown (intentionally) in its weirdness, you don't see it very often. A small flaw is that near the end it gets an unnecessary supernatural conclusion, but we can live with it.
By the way, it seems to be a remake of a movie called Two Thousand Maniacs. I haven't seen that one (or even heard about that), so you won't find a comparison here. I'm still wondering whether this movie was made by a Yankee who hates Southerners and wants to show them as retarded pig-screwing murderistic cannibals, or by a pissed-off Southerner who got fed up with all that South-bashing propaganda and decided to kill as many Yankees as he could in most imaginitive ways without going to prison for that.
posted by Harvester at 2:22 AM
1 Comments:
Cool! That movie had lotsa nudity, unfortunately all nude scenes were kinda cut short. The editor is probably a hypocritic (sp?) puritan Southern bastard.
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