Welcome to TBO.com. Skip directly to: our Keyword Search, Section Navigation, Content.

TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online

John Allman

If you’ve ever wandered the aisles at the video store or surfed the DVR pay-per-view options and seen a bunch of movies that you’ve never heard of, chances are John has watched them. Why? He loves movies. All kinds of movies. Good, bad, so-bad-they’re good, even the truly unwatchable ones. He mostly loves horror and science-fiction and drive-in exploitation movies that most upstanding model citizens wouldn’t dare watch. Then he writes up his thoughts so you can decide - watch, don’t watch or avoid at all costs. Sometimes he even gets to talk to the cool folks who make some of your favorite films.

Blood, Violence and Babes
John Allman

Most Recent Entries

Monthly Archives

2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams

Posted Aug 18, 2010 by John Allman

Updated Aug 18, 2010 at 07:56 AM

2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams
Genre: Horror/Comedy/Sequel
Directed by: Tim Sullivan
Run time: 86 minutes
Rating: Unrated
Format: DVD

The Lowdown: You have to work hard to offend as many different ethnic, social and minority groups as director Tim Sullivan does in his latest ode to flesh and blood excess, “2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams.”

The title alone tells you that this is not a movie that takes itself too seriously, but even then, this sequel to Sullivan’s loose remake/reimagining of H.G. Lewis’s cult classic, seems content to mine easy targets. The humor is so broad that it really comes off more campy than creepy, and while the leads are effective (Bill Moseley subbing for Robert Englund is an OK switch), much of the acting leaves a lot to be desired.

The major problems with “Field of Screams” are significant:

The humor directly targets, and makes fun of, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Jews, gays, lesbians, Southerners and Hollywood reality starlets. Outside of reality starlets, most of those groups have been parodied to death, and Sullivan’s script, which he co-wrote, is too juvenile and mean-spirited and, sadly, ignorant to generate any laughs. Case in point: The lone black actress is lynched by an angry mob of white rednecks. The scene is played for laughs (and fails miserably), and Sullivan, knowing he was on touchy ground, doesn’t even show the actress hanging, which is probably a wise decision.

The kills aren’t particularly impressive minus two – an incredibly gory and NC-17 disembowelment that would never make it past the MPAA, but on the ‘Unedited’ version works just fine, and a ‘Gotcha’ kill at the end that definitely elicits a hoot even if it isn’t terribly unexpected.

And the film’s overall quality is poor. The sound cuts in and out during stretches. The editing seems haphazard and cuts too quickly from certain kills so that you don’t get the full effect of the special effects.

As if to make up for the lack of any discernible plot, scares or even dramatic tension, Sullivan piles on the nudity, offering multiple and varied shots of bare boobs, bare butts and one full-frontal shot of a woman strapped to a gurney and being tormented by the delicious Christa Campbell and the ‘what the hell is doing here’ Ogre from the awesome industrial/goth band Skinny Puppy. Ogre also appeared in “repo: The Genetic Opera,” where he sang but rarely spoke. Here he gets to chew some dialogue, effect a Southern accent and leer menacingly at the camera.

Is “Field of Screams” a good movie? No. But it has moments that are enjoyable. The paperthin plot concerns the Confederate dead from Pleasant Valley, Ga., relocating their annual killing festival to Iowa and inadvertently and fortuitously running into an RV camper carrying two Reality TV stars (fashioned after Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie), their boyfriends, a director, his girlfriend, a boom operator, his girlfriend and a producer.
There’s few surprises to be found, but fans of Sullivan’s original reimagining likely will enjoy it for the blood and boobs alone.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – Insanely hot Christa Campbell and the smokin’ hot Larayia Gaston in her film debut.
Nudity – Gratuitous.
Gore – Over the top with one seriously gory good kill, one really funny kill and several OK but nothing special kills.
Drug use – Yes.
Bad Guys/Killers – The spirits of dead Confederate troops and their kinfolk.
Buy/Rent – Rent it.
Release Date – July 20, 2010