Игры

Two Thousand Maniacs! - 1964

Listen to this, the theme for Two Thousand Maniacs! written by director Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Now that this tune is permanently engraved on your brain stem and therefore affecting basic motor functionality, go make some coffee, take a seat right there. No, over there by the window. Now write a paragraph describing what you think encompasses the plot of this film

Now show me your work.

Wow, as usual the truth is far and away better than what your distilled, amoebatic imagination can muster. This is what your years of watching According to Jim has accomplished. Go write "I fail to comprehend schlock" 50 times on the blackboard.

Or do schools only have 'smartboards' these days? Ugh, I feel old...

A few tourists drive into Pleasant Valley (population 2000 - see where this is going?), a small southern town bedecked in confederate flags celebrating "The Centennial". I stress, this is the south. THE SOUTH. Children lynch a black cat (symbolism!) and locals spew a rootin' tootin' vernacular in which the denizens have "more fun than beagle dog on a coon hunt" and ladies "do declare" every 20-42 seconds. I'm talking so southern that these characters take two steps beyond parody into some sort of cartoony mega-pocalypse of exaggerated accents and dumb-people-jigs.

As disseminated to the unsuspecting tourists by the mayor, a Boss Hog/Yosemite Sam hybrid and easily the most southern man in all filmdom, they are to be the honored guests at The Centennial. But wait, what exactly is this centennial? Well, as discovered on a conveniently expositional plaque mounted on a rock midway through the film, it has been 100 years since the entire town of Pleasant Valley was massacred by pesky yankee troops during the Civil War. THIS IS NO ORDINARY CELEBRATION!!!!

So now we have a horror plot, in which innocent northern tourists are tortured and mutilated as an extravagant revenge for hundred-year-old war crimes.

Of course the film is known for its over the top gore effects, being the second part in the unofficial "Blood Trilogy". Tourists are cooked, hacked apart by axe-wielding rednecks, forced to play a Saw-esque game involving a massive boulder teetering off a tower (SPOILER: rocks crush people). In the end, our two hero-tourists escape, fall in love, and discover that the entire town, as I'd fervently hoped while viewing, was populated with civil war ghosts (!) who exact their revenge every 100 years. As the local cop would say, "I've lived here my whole life and never heard of Pleasant Valley". That's because it doesn't exist, sir. All 2000 titular maniacs disappear into the mist, the final two discussing how 100 years from now they can chase those yankee fools in rocket ships.

Alright, I've gotten the basic absurd plot out of the way. It's hilarious, way ahead of its time in terms of screen violence, and teeming with wonderful southern yokel stereotypes. But this isn't why I find the whole endeavor fascinating. For a low budget exploitation goretacular (though with $64k and 14 days of shooting, it was the largest scale production of its ilk up to that point), there is genuine pathos and some creative techniques percolating under the guise of pure entertainment.

Each of the lascivious tourists who end up as a pile of arterial jelly is not the victim of one insane killer as most horror lore would present. No, the entire town (represented on screen as 30-40 people) is involved in each slaying. They are all present at the nighttime campfire in which one poor tourist is drawn and quartered by unwitting horses, the crowd cheers for his impending death. But then he is actually torn asunder. The commotion stops. The townsfolk fall silent. They stare at the entrails strewn about in disbelief, processing the blood lust they so championed seconds earlier. Someone starts crooning Dixie and the party starts right back up with dancing and the devouring of beans. It's a small moment that is repeated during a second murder, but these 10 collective seconds say more than the rest of this film and most of these low/no budget exploitation can in their entire run times.

I always admire small bursts of formal creativity that you run across in these grindhouse grenades. There is an oddball "call and response" segment in which the tourists are now holed up in a hotel provided by the townsfolk. Two couples are a few floors up and speaking to each other in their respective rooms. Each line of theirs garners a response from two of the hicks in the street, a response aimed directly at the audience.

Woman in room (to husband): Such a strange little affair. It's almost like Halloween

Redneck Woman in street (laughing, looking into the camera, absurdly over-done accent): This is better than Halloween!

Different Woman in room (to husband): It's like John C Calhoun's version of trick or treat.

Man in street (to woman): Why yeeeah! We gonna provide the tricks, and them folks up there, they gonna provide the treats!

That's it. It's simple, creative, weird, and effective. I wish more low budget fare would play with the form even if only in such a marginal fashion. It's these moments that help any film stand out from the lot. The ghost ending is something we've seen multiple times before as well, but how often do we hear the ghosts complain that they didn't get to murder all of their targets, but are still more-or-less satisfied with 4 out of 6? There is more of interest here than just the blood, people. Would it have been made into a book is there wasn't!?