Two Thousand Maniacs

Two Thousand Maniacs

1964
USA

Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis

Staring Connie Mason
William Kerwin
Jeffrey Allen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Thousand_Maniacs!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058694/

Herschell Gordon Lewis had one really good idea.

Show people's limbs getting hacked off.

It seems so standard now, but at the time no one thought of showing it. He didn't do it to make any grand artistic statement or purge his psyche. He did it simply to make money.

An exploitation director in the 60's he made a series of rough sex flicks until he became curious if someone would pay to see pure gory violence. It turns out, he was right.

His first “gore” film “Blood Feast” was huge success on the grindhouse circuit and it inspired an attempt at a much better movie; “2000 Maniacs.”

Herschell “discovered” playboy playmate Connie Mason and she stared in both “Blood Feast” and “2000 Maniacs”. Filmed in a 2 week period “2000 Maniacs” would become one of Herschell's most celebrated “films”, inspiring cult status, and a Robert Englund remake.

The “plot” is simple. Two “Yankee” couples, Connie Mason's character and a hitchhiker are diverted off the highway into a small southern town celebrating a centennial. They become guests of honor and the town people go about delivering that world famous southern hospitality - by breaking up the couples and then killing them. The hitchhiker and Connie Mason start a romance of sorts and find out that the town was destroyed by Yankee soldiers at the end of the Civil War (the war of the States as the movie calls it occasionally) and the centennial is that of the destruction of the town. This is a sort of revenge upon the northerners plot.

Plot aside the real reason for watching this is to be caught up in the silliness of it all and be entertained by gore and violence. A sort of pre-slasher slasher. Although the gore is rather silly, for example Lewis was still experimenting on making convincing blood, the death scenes are far more “inspired” then most modern slashers, or even slashers of the 70's and 80's.

Most of the extras and “actors” were basically inhabitants of the Floridan town which they were filming at, making their whole deliverance really bad and kind of silly.

But that's all in good fun.

What also is in good fun is the soundtrack which is a rocking hillbilly hoedown, some of the music actually performed by Lewis himself.

I think the worse thing to say about “2000 Maniacs” is also it's greatest strength, and that is that “2000 Maniacs” is “pure” exploitation. It exists only to show you a form of sleaze you can't get from the mainstream.

It does try to slowly move at first, as if to create suspense, but since we already know what is going on it turns the first half of the film into a overly goofy black comedy.

There is also a padded on ending. It's almost as if he didn't have enough material to full out an hour an 20 minutes so he kept the movie, which had already ended, going in an attempt to deliver one last bit of weirdness. It doesn't work.

There's a scene in “2000 Maniacs” were a woman gets her finger cut off from a pocket knife. It looks cheap and silly, but it's there. There's a scene where the same woman gets tied down and has her arm hacked off with an axe, It looks cheap and silly, but it's there. There's a scene where a boulder crushes a woman's who is tied to slab. It looks cheap and silly, but it's there. They couldn't even find a way to shot the scene of a man being torn apart by four horses so they only suggest that it happened. These archetypes seem standard now but at the time Lewis was making everything up on the spot.. The point I'm making is that “2000 Maniacs” for better or for worse was blazing new ground of acceptable film making, and people were watching it. Giving it a well deserved place in movie history.

So pick up a copy and next time you have a friend who really enjoys to "descant" and "contemplate" the great classic movies over fine wine and import coffee you'll know which one to show him/her.