Movie: 2001 Maniacs (2005)

Last night I decided to watch a bad horror movie. Because it's the Halloween season, I happen to have several B-flicks lingering on my DVR right now. Bad movies, like Thralls (recently aired on Spike TV) and Dracula III: Legacy. Whether or not I'll ever watch them is moot, really. I keep them there as comfort, sort of like a chubby person keeps ice cream in the freezer. And yes, I have three different flavors in there right now ... waiting.

Showtime was featuring this movie, 2001 Maniacs. It's about a group of college students who are travelling to Florida for Spring Break. On the way, they get detoured into a remote town in Georgia, where they are welcomed as the guests of honor to a celebration. Unbeknownst to them, they'll be attending an annual barbecue ... as the main course.

Every Southern stereotype is here: the southern gentleman courter; the guy who has a romantic relationship with a sheep; the lesbian kissing-cousins; the town slut; the ultra-violent, animal-torturing teenager.

Stereotypes in this film were so pervasive, in fact, that I felt a little uncomfortable and even offended. And I'm no Southerner, by any means. But like a witness to a horrible freeway accident, I couldn't take my eyes off it!

The students represented a diverse cross-section of liberal demographics. There was the freaky, interracial couple; the gay guy; the promiscuous college girl; the nerdy virgin; and the wannabe jock. Each of them are, in turn, set upon by the town folk in one horrid way or another.

This flick featured: a girl getting drawn and quartered (yes, that kind of drawn and quartered, by horses); a girl getting the southern belle treatment (upside the head); a smashing performance by someone getting cold pressed to death; a sexually suggestive skewering; death by acidic moonshine; razor-sharp horseshoes being tossed at human remains; a barbed-wire beheading; secret maggots; and yes, the always enjoyable death by fellatio.

The performances were subpar, (except maybe for Robert Englund, who is always spectacularly macabre) but I couldn't help thinking a new psycho family has been brought into the fold of horror films. This movie is a cult classic and will certainly have a sequel.

Even today, there's that annoying song playing in my head: "The South's gonna rise again! Yeehaw!"

Sifted: 6/10