Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964)

Very well executed

So much average

Highly Overrated But Still Good

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Two thousand people live in the town of Pleasant Valley, an out-of- the-way place on a back road, somewhere on the way to Atlanta. All of them are maniacs, which is a decent premise for a film, and which illustrates Hershel G. Lewis's talent for what it takes to make a memorable exploitation film. Rather than being Confederate sympathizers these folks are like the ghosts of the town, which had been the scene of a Union (or Yankee) massacre exactly 100 years to the day on which all the action occurs. It's a film whose premise is a borderline sickening vengeance the maniacs inflict on four northerners (two young couples) who are detoured by two of Pleasant Valley's leading citizens, into its trap to make them the town's special guests for its one-hundred year anniversary of the massacre. Things get increasingly gory, in a kind of gratuitous way, but the storyline is almost substantial enough to hold it all together. Lewis also did the cinematography, which has many Confederate-flag drenched scenes to go along with bright red blood and a pretty blue sky.

2000 MANIACS! is the second of exploitation director Herschell Gordon Lewis' notorious 'blood' trilogy that began with the world's first gore film, BLOOD FEAST. This follows similar ground, using a lightweight story as an excuse for a string of shoddy but bloody gore sequences that still have the power to shock and disturb even to this day. The gore scenes are played out humorously, with a grinning bunch of loons taking great delight in dispatching their victims. There's a suspenseful scene where a girl has a boulder dropped on her; a genuinely ingenious bit where a guy is rolled down a hill in a barrel lined with vicious nails, an unpleasant murder where a girl has a arm hacked off (it's later barbecued) and a shoddy bit where a guy is quartered between four horses. The bright red blood splashes liberally about the scene in this excessive display of sadism.Otherwise, the movie is drab and dull. The amateurish cast give a range of performances. The two leads (slightly wooden William Kerwin and extremely pretty Connie Mason) are good, the rest aren't. The nadir is the redneck laughing boy whose overacting knows no bounds. The direction is pedestrian and the lengthy dialogue sequences are dull to watch. There's a good, suspenseful chase towards the end, but then the films goes on another TWENTY MINUTES to bolster the running time and these are even more excruciating than the epilogue scenes in RETURN OF THE KING: a real chore to sit through. In the end, it's obvious this film was written around four vicious, inventive death sequences but that isn't enough to make a good movie. 2000 MANIACS! is a bore for the most part. Great soundtrack, though.

Here at IMDb, there appears to be an interesting difference between the "splatter" film cult and those who admit they watch pornography. Since the 'splatter' film is really a kind of sadistic/violence pornography, I went, on a hunch, after reading through reviews of this film, to the reviews for a known cult porno, "Deep Throat." I thought I would find the same sort of remarks (with obvious necessary variation), but was surprised to discover that those who praise "Deep Throat" seem determined to discuss the merits of its story, an issue that doesn't concern most who praise "2,000 Maniacs." What is both interesting and upsetting about many of the positive reviews of this film is that the writers admit that what brings them to it are what, they also admit, are the "perverse" or "sick" elements - they want to see the mutilation, the blood, the pain of the victim, this gives them enjoyment.This was the first of only about a half-dozen films I've walked out of my entire life. I left after the first major episode of sadism, where a hick thug laughingly cuts off the thumb of a girl with whom he's on a picnic, for no discernible reason whatsoever except that he finds it amusing. It was clear that the audience was not invited to identify with the victim who was merely an object of use for the thug. And I have no idea, to this day, why anyone would identify with the thug. Nor do I understand the only other psychological explanation for watching this scene without any identification at all, that is, as a clinical observation of how good or how poor the special effects are.I like action films, so I recognize the cathartic, even therapeutic, use of violence in cinema. But just cutting off a woman's thumb just for the enjoyment of her pain, or to see how much it might bleed, is beyond any reasonable understanding.This film remains a strong argument for suppression of sado-porn, or at least burying it under an "X" or NC-17 rating. It is confusing why Woo's "The Killer" was originally given an "X" - yet I was able to walk in to see this Lewis film, at the time of a brief re-release, when it was obvious I was only 14. It has left an indelibly bad impression on me all these years, and I will always damn the name of Hershel Gordon Lewis for it. Some have tried to defend this film as "so bad it's funny," but sado-porn is just cruel and can never be funny. My psychic pain is not a subject for your profit or enjoyment.

Having finally watched a Herschell Gordon Lewis horror movie last year on YouTube (The Wizard of Gore), when I found out that Two Thousand Maniacs! was now there as well (actually, The Wizard of Gore now seems removed), I quickly clicked the first of nine parts that were uploaded. It was fascinating listening to The Pleasant Vally Boys playing their bluegrass music throughout even after all the gory things that happened though there was silence after one of those deaths were depicted that provided some chills. The gore is mostly well done if not as shocking to me since I grew up watching the Friday the 13th movies on HBO as a teen. The stars are Connie Mason, Thomas Wood (a.k.a William Kerwin who would eventually marry Mason), Jeffrey Allen (who was born in my birthtown of Chicago, Ill.), Shelby Livingston, Ben Moore, Jerome Eden, Gary Bakeman, Mark Douglas, Linda Cochran, Yvonne Gilbert (who would eventually marry director Lewis before divorcing him), Michael Korb, Vincent Santo, Andy Wilson, and Candi Conder. Mason and Wood were in Lewis' previous film, Blood Feast. All the Southern accents sounded exaggerated though Cochran as Betsy was a turn-on for me especially since her top allowed her bare shoulders and some cleavage! The other women, Gilbert (Beverly), Livingston (Bea), and Mason (Terry), not to mention Conder's cameo as a switchboard operator were also classic beauties. As for the men, well, their performances were all over the place especially those between Allen as Mayor Buckman, Moore as Lester, and Bakeman as Rufus though no one was as irritating as the kid Santo who plays Billy with the most atrocious Southern accent and is way too loud to boot! Having known about the Bridgadoon reference, I wasn't surprised by the twist. So overall, this was quite an effective thriller from the legendary H. G. Lewis.