From the bizarre plays of madness and lust by playwright Tennessee Williams to the strange obsessions of author Flannery O'Connor, the American South has long been the setting for countless horror and Gothic-themed stories. These tales typically focus on grotesque characters in unpleasant situations played out on a landscape damaged by the fallout of the American Civil War. In both literature and film, the South is often painted as a dark and twisted place.

Gore auteur Herschell Gordon Lewis played up these ideas to the nth degree with his Southern-fried masterpiece Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) - a follow up to his enormously successful, and now iconic, gore "clas-sick", Blood Feast (1963).

Two Thousand Maniacs! is a gleefully nasty and darkly comic story that is strongly reminiscent of the controversial EC Comics from the 1950s (Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, Shock SuspenStories, etc.) The opening sequence could easily be a filmic representation of one of the comic's introductory panels. The visuals and tone are pitch perfect as we witness a couple of hayseeds removing road signs and putting up "detour" markers. At first we are unsure what they are doing - perhaps it's a prank of some sort? We soon realize that this is their method of luring a car full of Northern tourists into their little town.

Welcome to Pleasant Valley, a mysterious settlement that is in the midst of a Centennial celebration where our hapless tourists are the "guests of honor". At first it seems all fun and games until we slowly start to realize that the denizens of this unusual city are much more than they appear.

Though the acting styles of the performers are varied - which range from the Slim Pickens-type overacting of the Mayor Buckman character to the semi-comatose stylings of lead actress Connie Mason – Two Thousand Maniacs! is a definite improvement over the stagey, disjointed Blood Feast. The film also succeeds in creating an atmosphere of true suspense and dread as we begin to learn the intentions of the citizens of Pleasant Valley. Since this is an exploitation film, the obvious purpose of the movie is to showcase the strange murder set pieces, all of which are quite imaginative and executed in a garish, Looney Tunes-type fashion. Though these sequences are gory, the blood and grue are so outrageous and cartoonish that it's easy to look past the viscera and just see an actor covered in red paint.

There is no doubt that Two Thousand Maniacs! paved the way for future exploitation films set in the "backwoods" or "hillbilly" territory. With the emergence of Deliverance in 1972 and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1974, the screen depiction of the American South was permanently marred and associated with images of perversity, deformity and allusions of inbreeding. In more recent years, films like Wrong Turn (2003), Hatchet (2006) and The Hills Have Eyes (2006) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes/franchises all share a similar message and kinship with Lewis' ferocious fairy tale - a message that warns, "don't stray far from the known path" for certain death could be right around the corner.

Producer: David F. Friedman
Writer and Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Cinematography: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Film Editing: Robert L. Sinise
Production Design: David F. Friedman
Original Music: Larry Wellington
Cast: William Kerwin (Tom White), Connie Mason (Terry Adams), Jeffrey Allen (Mayor Buckman), Ben Moore (Lester MacDonald), Gary Bakeman (Rufus Tate), Jerome Eden (John Miller), Shelby Livingston (Bea Miller), Michael Korb (David Wells), Yvonne Gilbert (Beverly Wells), Mark Douglas (Harper Alexander), Linda Cochran (Betsy), Vincent Santo (Billy), Andy Wilson (Policeman), The Pleasant Valley Boys.
C-87m.

by Eric Weber