Movies
Official Release, First Images From ‘2001 Manaics’ Sequel
Cult film veteran Bill Moseley (“House of 1,000 Corpses”) has just completed filming his role as Mayor Buckman (replacing Robert Englund) in director Tim Sullivan’s latest installment of the horror/comedy franchise “2001 Maniacs”. The film, titled 2001 Maniacs:Beverly Hellbillys“, was shot entirely on location in Iowa. You can read more info inside and check out the first ever stills.
According to Sullivan and producer Christopher Tuffin, it is as much a wild re-imagining of the preceding films as a sequel to them. Their intention was to raise the stakes beyond the ordinary glut of by-the-numbers horror releases to create a smart, genre-defying feature that pushes every limit to the extreme. Tuffin compares “Maniacs” to an episode of “South Park” or “The Simpsons” in the sense that “Maniacs” is nothing less than a carnival house mirror held up to American culture.
“Over the years I was approached many times to write and direct a sequel, but I waited until we not only had a storyline that served as a worthy successor to “2001 Maniacs”, but also the creative freedom to push the envelope open even further in a smart and funny way,” says Sullivan. “Then on the eve of the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first African-American president, I saw the opportunity to once again use the residents of Pleasant Valley as vehicle to expose the deep rooted prejudices of all segments of our society in a way that would hopefully make everyone realize the absurdity of their biases, while also sneaking in a few laughs in at the same time.”
Moseley heads an ensemble cast that includes Lin Shaye (“Snakes on a Plane”), Nivek Ogre (“Repo! The Genetic Opera”), Christa Campbell ..(“Day of the Dead”), Ahmed Best (“Star Wars: The Phantom Menace”), Trevor Wright (“Shelter”) and telenovela vixen Andrea Leon (“Hood of Horror”).
“For horror fans internationally this is a great package – an established franchise, a cult director, a horror veteran like Bill Moseley surrounded by a hot young cast. We are very excited,” says Catherine Quantschnigg, head of sales for IM Global Home Entertainment.
The finished film will be unveiled at this year’s American Film Market in November.
Click the image below for all of the stills!
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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