Horror Movie Review: 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (2010)

Let’s make this clear from the start…2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams is a terrible horror movie with awful jokes that seem designed to insult the viewer.

Very few actors return from the original & while I was initially excited to see Bill Moseley had stepped into Robert Englund’s shoes the end result is so awful that I may never look at him the same again.

So the story continues on from the original…the maniacs of Pleasant Valley are holding the annual ‘kill some Northerners’ but no-one comes. It turns out all the deaths are being investigated & the local police (who have turned a blind eye) aren’t willing to help anymore.

After dispatching the cop by rolling him down a hill in a barrel with spikes driven in a small group of the town get in a bus & take the show on the road. If the North won’t come to them then they’ll go to the North.

I know that it makes no sense…

Meanwhile the show, Road Rascals, is on the road as well with the stars  (2 spoilt girls) who are clearly based on Paris & Nicole of The Simple Life. Everyone on the tour bus are massive tools except for the Hispanic guy who plays up to every cliché in the book.

They run into the travelling circus of the Pleasant Valley ghouls who invite them to hang with them. Seeing a chance to film all this for the show the producer agrees & before you know it they are being offed in varyingly stupid & uninteresting ways.

It’s boring & in no way a visual treat (except for one).

The connections to the original are barely there. For some reason now the wholly racist town of Pleasant Valley have no issue travelling & having sex with those of different races. The Chinese woman should be ashamed of the lines she had to say (you want sucky suck!?) & the way in which she delivered them. Oh sure, later Mayor Bill Mosley explains briefly how she is part of the group but it doesn’t make sense.

There are many pop culture references such as jokes about Helen Keller, Brokeback Mountain & Flashdance. I’m not joking…a supposed Confederate town living within its own era luring unsuspecting folks to their death make these kinds of jokes. It is just awful.

The cheese factor is ramped up to insane heights but it goes too far. Way too far & results in awful acting & terrible dialogue. Several times I openly cringed as someone made another terrible reference to sex.

The film is all about it without actually showing you anything but gratuitous boobs & weirdly placed crotch shots. It’s not funny at all & becomes tiresome quickly.

There is little to praise here at all…the gore is good at times, awful at others. Characters bleed buckets but it’s doesn’t look good & has a watery effect. The cheap way it is filmed really does a lot of damage as well. It is not a film to admire.

You’ll want to turn the movie off after the first 20 minutes & I can’t blame you but they save the best for last. You see throughout the movie the Hispanic guy has been a massive twat who suddenly turns out to be our hero. He ends up falling from height & landing on a pitchfork that goes through his chest & out his back.

Dead, right? No!

He comes back at the end with blood marks on his shirt but pretty much ok. He even fights Bill Moseley…10 minutes after getting impaled by a pitchfork.

Oh & one of the cast was the voice of Jar Jar Binks.

Screw this movie…

I can’t believe just how far this movie went from the original. It tried to take the black comedy & ramp it up but ended up being awful. So hard to enjoy, so hard to sit through & so hard to praise…