Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Robert Englund | ... | Mayor Buckman | |
Lin Shaye | ... | Granny Boone | |
Giuseppe Andrews | ... | Harper Alexander | |
Jay Gillespie | ... | Anderson Lee | |
Marla Malcolm | ... | Joey (as Marla Leigh Malcom) | |
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Dylan Edrington | ... | Nelson |
Matthew Carey | ... | Cory | |
Peter Stormare | ... | Professor Ackerman | |
Gina Marie Heekin | ... | Kat | |
Brian Gross | ... | Ricky | |
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Mushond Lee | ... | Malcolm |
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Bianca Smith | ... | Leah |
Brendan McCarthy | ... | Rufus | |
Adam Robitel | ... | Lester | |
Christa Campbell | ... | Milk Maiden |
While traveling on vacation to Florida, the college friends Anderson Lee, Cory Jones and Nelson Elliot meet the gorgeous Joey and Kat in a gas station traveling with their gay friend Ricky to the same location. Anderson gives his phone number to Joey in Florida. The teenagers decide to take a shortcut and they find a detour through an old road leading to the Southern town of Pleasant Valley. They are welcomed by the local Mayor Buckman as guests of honor together with Joey, Kat, Ricky and the Afro-American biker Malcolm and his Chinese girlfriend Leah and invited to stay for their Guts and Glory Jubilee with free lodging, meals and booze at Granny Boone's hotel, and dancing, games and a mouth-watering barbecue in the climax of the jubilee. The group accepts the invitation but sooner they find who will supply the meat for the feast. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
In the 2000s, it seemed a fad to take old cult horror movies and remake them. Sometimes it worked, most of the time it didn't. This one at least went out of its way to expand on the mythos of its predecessor
Should anyone be given the role of Mayor Buford, one should devour the scenery. Robert Englund, bless his heart, does just that, and in the most delightfully cheesy manner. The victims, downgraded from rational adults to a bunch of obnoxious college students, deserve no sympathy to the point that in the first five minutes, you just want all of them to die.
The violence is admirable, only one of the death scenes is a callback to the original. Blood effects are standard 2005 slasher movie level but they're gruesome all the same. The writers got creative and they get props.
In this modernized version, minority victims are introduced, an African-American man and an Asian woman, both of whom are subject to racism. But this is expected as the antagonists, after all, are Civil War era Southerners. That said, this movie is in no short supply of Southern popular culture references, mostly to Gone with the Wind.
All in all, when comparing to the 1964 Herschell Gordon Lewis cult classic, 2001 Maniacs is simply a contemporary upgrade but watch it as a standalone, it's okay.