Review: Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964)

Directed by: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Starring: William Kerwin, Connie Mason, Jeffrey Allen
Written by: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Music by: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Country: United States
Available on: Blu-ray (Arrow), DVD (Something Weird)
IMDb

Herschell Gordon Lewis’ follow-up to Blood Feast (1963) is one of his most intriguing concepts: The slaughtered residents of the fictional Southern town Pleasant Valley, brutally razed by Union forces during the Civil War, rise from the grave every 100 years to lure in a group of Northerners whom they ceremonially torture and kill. In addition to a more fully realized story, the budget here is larger than ever, allowing for a fairly extensive cast that puts up some of the better acting in Lewis’ filmography. The film is shockingly well-constructed and the suspense is built artfully, without too many tip-offs that something terrible is going to happen to these tourists, and the something terrible that happens is pretty shocking, even for Lewis. The methods of execution in Two Thousand Maniacs! are inventively cruel: I won’t spoil all of them, but one of my favorites is a game of barrel roll, but the barrel is studded with really long nails. The main “maniacs,” especially Harper (Stanley Dyrector), are ably sinister and strike that balance of joyful and sadistic that the Sawyer family personifies in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. HGL himself composes the Southern-fried, bluegrass-flavored music that accompanies the mayhem and it, like the film itself, edges pretty close to sympathy for the maniacs and their plight despite their savagery. There’s a near-celebratory tone throughout that makes this particularly effective as a horror flick. I’m not usually into hicksploitation, but Two Thousand Maniacs! does it well and Lewis' homegrown DIY charm is perfectly suited for it. The movie is missing a lot of the, shall we say, eccentricities that season much of his work, whether borne intentionally or through circumstance; because of that, it didn’t resonate with me as strongly as The Wizard of Gore or Blood Feast. But it’s one of the filmmaker’s favorites and it’s easily one of the better-made things he’s done.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10