The soul of the 1980s slasher is imbibed in Matthew Williams’ Maniac Farmer. Set in rural Kentucky, Williams directed, shot, wrote, produced and edited this fun little throw back to the bad-old-days of low budget 80s schlock. It all seems quite tongue in cheek, and with the right attitude and company Maniac Farmer has all the hallmarks of a fun evening spent with friends.
A renegade band of street punks are tormenting the citizens of rural Kentucky. Their leader (Tyler Caldwell) goes by the name Blasphemous Rex and speaks through one of the worst British accents you will ever hear. As two detectives try to track down this motley crew, the punks decide to rob a local farmer, thus falling into the clutches of an even greater evil. The stage is set for buckets of gore and some thunderously stupid one-liners. “This city’s a toilet bowl”, one detective states, “and somebody needs to flush it”.
If you can look past the terrible acting, exposition heavy script, terrible gore effects, actors clearly younger than they’re supposed to be and the short 71-minute running time there’s a lot of fun to be had here. It’s the kind of experience that the folks at YouTube’s Best of the Worst try to find; well meaning schlock that isn’t above aiming low. This experience comes to us from the labor of a single person, so all credit to Williams for not only getting it done but getting an international release. Independent filmmaking is difficult at the best of times, but when one man is doing it it’s a crusade rather than a challenge.
For a film aiming so low brow and with next to no budget there are some genuinely interesting ideas at play. It’s rare to find a film where the audience is rooting for the killer rather than the victim. As one of the detectives says, and I concur, “Men and violence, it’s like hogs and slop. You can’t keep hogs away from slop.” Plus there’s an absolute banger of a theme song brought to us by the fine folks at Wrong Party, one of whom is an actor in the film.
The best way to see this would be with a room full of friends or at a midnight screening at Monsterfest. Get some beers, sit back and have some fun. Maniac Farmer isn’t a great film by any stretch but it’s for sure a fun one. You’ll simultaneously be laughing with it and at it.
Maniac Farmer is now available at Vimeo On Demand and Prime Video.
Maniac Farmer | Official Trailer from Bounty Films on Vimeo.
