2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams picks up on yet another anniversary of the slaughter of Pleasant Valley, GA. The residents of Pleasant Valley have prepared the feast and the celebration and all they need now are the guests. Unfortunately, this year the Sheriff has declared that he's not going to let them kill anymore Yankees. The FBI has been sniffing around after the last disappearances, so he's cancelling the festival from now on. Personally, I think the Sheriff should have been a bit smarter than to tell a group of cannibal ghosts that they can't eat any more people, but since he's not, he deserves the ending they give him. Unfortunately, they still have no guests for the celebration! As Granny Boone (Lin Shaye) and Mayor Buckman (Bill Moseley) say though, "If the Northern folk won't come to the South, why we'll bring the South to them!" So the town of Pleasant Valley takes its festival on the road!
While Pleasant Valley is traveling North, the reality TV show group, the "Road Rascals" are trying (a bit unsuccessfully) to head South. The Road Rascals star sisters Rome (Katy Marie Johnson) and Tina Sheraton (Asa Hope) and their boy toys, Falcon (Trevor Wright) and K-Jay (Jordan Yale Levine). I'll leave it up to you to figure out who this crew is a parody of. Anyway, thanks to Jesus' (Alex Luria) lack of directional skills, they end up running into the maniacs' temporary setup in Iowa. Since they're not going to make it to Georgia on time to shoot their next segment, their agent Val (Andrea Leon) decides that they should join the jamboree and just shoot there, since the maniacs were nice enough to bring Georgia to them. Val's going to regret that decision before long though! One by one, the group starts to disappear. Of course, the actual Road Rascals are too wrapped up in themselves to even notice that anything is wrong until it is way too late.
Personally, I was cheering for the maniacs and I have a sneaky suspicion that everyone who watches the movie will be as well. I mean, the Road Rascals and most of the crew are so obnoxious that you want them to die an amusingly horrible death, and the maniacs are quite adept at making that happen! 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams has some of the best death scenes (and worst puns on them) of any movie I've ever seen. My two personal favorites are the face that is ripped off by Scarlet Red (Nicole Rae) and the head that is blown up by Harper Alexander (Nivek Ogre). Several of the maniacs that were in the last movie are back for this one as well, including Granny Boone, Milk Maiden (Christa Campbell), and my personal favorite, Hucklebilly (Ryan Fleming). Harper Alexander and Mayor Buckman are back as well, but are played by different actors. At first, I was worried about this change, particularly with Mayor Buckman, but my fears were gone after only the first few minutes. Within 10 minutes, I had forgotten that anyone else had every played their roles! There are some new maniacs to the cast as well including China Rose (Kathryn Le), Scarlet Red, and Crow (Ahmed Best).
Fair warning, 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. They make fun of everyone in the movie: Northerners, Southerners, African Americans, Asians, Homosexuals - no one is off limits, but it's all equal mistreatment so no one can be particularly offended. The movie is meant to be a horror-comedy.
There are a few special features that really give a lot of additional information to 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams. I highly recommend that you watch the Behind the Scenes feature to learn so much more about the movie, like where the title came from and who really cursed Pleasant Valley.
I love 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams even more on the second viewing than I did on the first. It's a hilarious horror movie that will keep you entertained over and over. As long as you think you can handle it, I highly recommend that you go pick up 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams today!
