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| Siren Visual Entertainment (Australia). All Regions, PAL. 4:3. English 2.0 Mono. 83 minutes |
| The Movie |
| Cover Art |
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| Credits |
Director: Herschell
Gordon Lewis
Starring: Connie Mason,
Thomas Wood, Jeffrey Allen
Screenplay: Herschell
Gordon Lewis,
Music: Herschell Gordon
Lewis,
Tagline: An Entire Town
Bathed In Pulsing Human Blood! Madmen Crazed For
Carnage!,
Country: USA |
Herschell Gordon Lewis has marvelled at the
production values of Two Thousand Maniacs in just about every interview he's given since
the early 70s. Yeah, well, there's some nice cherry-picker
crowd shots and they're apparently working from
a script, but where this flick really expands
upon the Blood Feast model is
in the attention to genuine sadism. While Two
Thousand Maniacs has it's fair share
of gore it's not as fetishised as in Blood
Feast. Instead, the focus is on the perpetrators
of what the ad copy (brilliantly written by Lewis?)
succinctly tags as, Brutal...Evil...Ghastly Beyond
Belief!
Two separate car loads of travellers in convertibles
are diverted by primitive road signs and lured
off the main highway into the Centennial celebrations
of Pleasant Valley, a sleepy township of two thousand
maniacs minus eighteen hundred. The mayor makes
them guests of honour, talks up the big BBQ to
be held later that night, and packs everyone off
to hotel rooms. Dissension soon sets in amongst
some of the new guests and before the day's out
not only are some of the couples cut asunder by
the intervention of the locals but so to are some
of their limbs and body parts. At first the locals
show some expertise in prank calling before they
pull out their butchering equipment. The first
victim is perhaps the the most traumatic as one
of the male hosts decides to show one of the new
girls in town his knife and then cuts off her
finger durning an over zealous demonstration.
In shock and screaming pitifully she runs to the
mayor who's solution to the problem is to lay
her on a bench and completely amputate her arm
(or rather the arm of an obvious shop dummy).
The mayor is soon working the phone with his own
brand of crank yanking as some of his yokel bretheren
spit roast the appendage to the accompaniement
of the Lester Flatt's tune, "Rolling in my sweet
baby's arms". Connie Mason asks what they've got
on the spit in between attempts to sneak away
with road pal Thomas Wood (playing a character
named Tom White). Next, the drunkest guest is
torn to pieces by the two horses he's tied between.
Another male victim is then put in a barrel that's
lined with nails and pushed down a hill. Tom and
Connie finally make good with their escape while
the final female victim is gleefully crushed with
a giant rock. Back on the highway Tom attempts
to report the activities of the murderous townsfolk
to the police who've never heard of Pleasant Valley
and only want to breathalyze him. Tom returns
to the spot on the highway that they left and
finds tire tracks but nothing else. Head hillbilly
Hopper is then shown coming out of a swamp just
before he disappears in a puff of smoke. Lucky
Tom had souvineered a noose to at least prove
to himself that it all did really happen. |
| Video |
| Like Blood Feast we get another
sharp transfer and combined with 20,000 watts of
production design colour it's the perfect precursor
to the blinding power of She Devil's on
Wheels, a film that can really punch you
in the eye. Actually, parts of Two Thousand
Maniacs are as shocking to look at as some
of the depicted mayhem which is customarily fake. |
| Audio |
| The Dolby stereo version is serviceable enough
but the lack of budget in the sound effects department
is highly noticeable. The music soundtrack is another
matter and I'd wager that more care and attention
went here than anywhere else on any other Lewis
film. The Pleasant Valley Boys superb string pluckin'
of the Lewis-penned material matches the visuals
like few other films can boast much less the first
hillbilly splatter flick. |
| Extra Features |
| Trailers for Two Thousand Maniacs and Blood Feast along with nearly
17 minutes of outtakes that are billed as rare.
Like the ones accompanying Blood Feast these scraps of footage don't feature any extra
gore but they do make for interesting comparisons
with the digitally remastered feature. |
| The Verdict |
Another first of sorts for Herschell Gordon Lewis
and one of much far greater influence. Two
Thousand Maniacs not only led Lewis to
another subgenre (the Hillbilly moonshiners This
Stuf'll KIll Ya and Moonshine Mountain)
and other types of gang flicks (Just for
the Hell of It and She Devil's
On Wheels) but once seen it's difficult
not to view any film that depicts rural inhabitants
without comparing them to the hedonistic funsters
that exist in Pleasant Valley. Watching The
Cars That Ate Paris the other day I felt
an urge to hear a banjo. Interestingly, the clapperboard
displayed in the outtakes shows it was filmed under
the title Centennial". I wonder if Two
Thousand Maniacs would've achieved a fraction
of it's notoriety with the original moniker? When
trying to explain away the impact of Two
Thousand Maniacs on popular culture a recent
academic tome accidentally re-titled it itself to
"Ten Thousand Maniacs". Highly recommended
for all good old boys and girls.
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