Maníacos

It never fails to amaze me what some people have filmed as entertainment. This film, for example, tells the story of a town that magically reappears 100 years after being destroyed by Union soldiers to wreak its vengeance on Yankee tourists. Herschell Gordon Lewis uses his same lack of directorial style, bad actors, and hideous dialogue to incorporate into this cheesy, sleazy, yet highly enjoyable gore film, his second in his gore trilogy. The Southern characterizations alone are so stereotyped and, if I were a Southerner, so offensive that they make the viewer wince more than the bright red that dapples the screen over the various killings such as a woman being made into a barbecue, a man being nailed as a barrel rolls down a hill, another man is quartered, and finally a woman is squashed by a gigantic boulder. The southern "maniacs" have missing teeth, no idea of standard English, always wear overalls and red scarfs about their necks, and lastly have no humanity at all in them....nor does the Yankee cast as not one of them can act either. This film, with its major problems not withstanding, is entertaining solely for its shock element of yesteryear which is now its comedy factor of today. One last note, some people consider this Lewis's masterpiece, but it is decidedly a notch below Blood Feast.....both of which are a notch below most Ed Wood films.

After his successful début, Blood Feast (1963), which introduced cinema audiences to splatter horror, Herschell Gordon Lewis made his redneck horror movie, Two Thousand Manics!. Just a few years later, horror movies set in America's Deep South were all the rage, and are still a popular location for some gruesome slicing and dicing (Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil (2010) made fun of the racial stereotyping), so perhaps we have this film to thank for the likes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Deliverance (1972). And Lewis goes all out, with Dixie flags aplenty and thick-accented inbred simpletons in dungarees, in what is a noticeable improvement on his ropey début.

Celebrating their centennial, the town of Pleasant Valley welcome six Yankee visitors who unwittingly drive into their celebrations. The town's mayor, Buckman (Jeffrey Allen - who went on to star in a few of Lewis's films), promises them some of that famous Southern hospitality, but with his two retarded henchman, plans to butcher them all to gain vengeance for a massacre committed a hundred years previously in the midst of the American Civil War. Terry Adams (Connie Mason), who has picked up hitch-hiker Tom (William Kerwin) on his way to a 'teacher's conference', notice their fellow Yankees disappearing under strange circumstances and attempt to flee the increasingly bizarre town.

Everything about this film looks more professional than Blood Feast, with a more patient approach taken with the moments of gore, and less atrocious editing and camera-work. Don't get me wrong though, the Lewis tropes are there - mannequin limbs, dodgy sound editing, paint-red gore, but it just seems that little bit better. It's still a dreadful film, with Feast's block-headed cheeseball William Kerwin - who actually had a pretty successful acting career - returning for more ham-fisted dialogue delivery, and elongated moments of tedium, but it's still quite fun. The gore is certainly better handled, with everything from dismemberment-by- horse and being pushed down a hill in a barrel full of nails being use to satisfy the blood lust. Which makes it all the more strange that Lewis seemed to retreat back into complete ineptitude after this, with his next film, Color Me Blood Red (1965) being the worst of his 'Blood Trilogy', and the long line of nudie cuties and Z-grade horror films that followed. Still, it's a must-see for horror fans.

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The second part of the blood trilogy that began with Blood Feast.

This one is considerably more professional than the first. But it still as its short comings. Acting is variable. And the plot is weak and does not make a lot of sense. The gore scenes (which is probably the reason why you are watching) are great. And even quite brutal, although the film is too camp to take too seriously. The music is also great and very fitting.

It does suffer from two annoying things however. The annoying little boy for one. But I do think they knew how annoying he was, because at the end even the villagers don't want him back. The other thing is how long the film takes to end. Its got more endings than Spielberg film.

Still its pretty good and worth it if you like gore films...

Writer/director/cinematographer Hershell Gordon Lewis is considered by bad movie fans to be one of the few "autors" in film history to have equaled or at least come close to equaling the abysmal work of Ed Wood, Jr.. While it's debatable which was worse or if another small-time film maker (such as Ray Dennis Steckler or Al Adamson) was the worst, no one in the know would argue that Lewis was a brilliant film maker! However, even the most inept can occasionally get lucky and TWO THOUSAND MANIACS is Lewis' moment in the sun. Unlike previous films such as BLOOD FEAST (which were all amazingly bad), there was enough good about TWO THOUSAND MANIACS that I actually recommend you watch it--particularly because it proves substantial budgets or consistently good acting aren't necessary to make a decent film!

The film begins with two very stereotypical hillbilly idiots tricking two cars full of Yankees off the highway and into their town. There the locals declare that these outsiders are their guests of honor for a centennial celebration and they are convinced to stay. Now the audience knows this is a very bad idea, but the six folks don't yet suspect that these hicks mean to do them great bodily harm. Of course, that might also be because they didn't see the folks running around town with nooses in preparation for their arrival! One by one the Yanks are brutally killed and the ways they did it were pretty clever and the gore was amazingly realistic for 1964. It's amazing to think that with a budget of $46.28 that they were able to achieve these effects, as the blood actually looked like blood and the killing was quite shocking for the mid-1960s.

Two of the six are reasonably bright and guess what is in store, so the last part of the film consists of showing their efforts to leave this deathtrap. Oddly, despite the budget, the acting of these two was pretty good (particularly William Kerwin) and the last 15 minutes of the film turned out to be by far the best. There were several wonderful twists and turns that showed Lewis could actually write a clever script and despite the stupid hillbilly acting earlier in the film, the film was surprisingly good. I won't ruin it, but it sure was nice to see that things only improved as the film progressed. Plus, every time I thought that the movie SHOULD have ended sooner, the additional portions kept building on an excellent "Twilight Zone" style script.

By the way, the film offended many when it debuted--though it also became a cult favorite. The gore and offensive portrayal of Southerners as crazy morons must have made many at the drive-ins have heart attacks! I sure wish I could have been there to see it!

'Two Thousand Maniacs!' may not get name-dropped as much as the infamous 'Blood Feast', but it is arguably the better and more entertaining movie, and quite possibly Herschell Gordon Lewis' best effort. HGL's budget seems to be a tad bigger this time around, though the acting is just as poor. In fact the two leads (Thomas Wood and Connie Mason) are both from 'Blood Feast', so that explains a lot. The plot in this one concerns a small town in the South that is celebrating its centenary by luring unsuspecting "yankees", and basically torturing them to death. HGL doesn't spare us the gore, but the murders are done with such good humour that the movie ends up with an odd feel somewhere between 'The Beverly Hillbillies' and 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. This is a very silly movie obviously, but also very entertaining fun for those with a strong sense of the absurd.