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2,000
Maniacs
(1964) |
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After 1963's gore spectacular Blood Feast one approached 2000 Maniacs with more than slight trepidation fearing the most gruesome blood drenched atrocities. The first twenty minutes of the movie are thus spent watching in a state of extreme caution, similar to when you brace yourself for the exploding leap of a Jack-in-the-Box.
Blood Feast didn't waste any time at all getting down to business and one was shown a woman's eyes being gouged out and then her limbs being hacked off - and this in the first couple of minutes of running time! This time around director H.G. Lewis leaves his audience dying of tension at the sheer expectancy of what horrors may lie ahead. The film begins with a couple of red neck pranksters dragging a detour sign along a lonely road to deceive drivers bearing license plates from the Northern States. Three or four cars fall for their trap and end up in a remote town by the name of Pleasant Valley which is in the midst of gearing up for their centennial festivities and are oddly awaiting guests to drop by. The bewildered guests materialize in the shape of the lost drivers who stumble upon the celebrations but are delighted if a touch taken aback to find that they are being toasted as the "Guests of Honour" for the duration of the festivities. The group of six are flattered by the attention they receive at the hands of the country folk and decide to go along with the festivities rather than try to continue en route. Nothing much happens for the first 25 minutes or so and just when one begins to think Lewis has mellowed in just his second gore outing all hell is let loose! One of the sluttish girls takes off with a country bumpkin and after a smooch or two finds her date taking to carving her up with his knife….first a cut in her finger than the entire finger is lopped off and then the entire arm is hacked off with an axe to the delight of the celebrating Hillbillies. Lewis was merely lulling his audience into a sense of safe complacency before zapping them with the most ghastly and splattery in your face gore with the butchered arm scene! Events become grimmer as one by one the innocent visitors are rounded up and meted out the most horrific revenge for what happened during the Civil War all those years ago. One of the unfortunates is tied up and torn into four pieces by being tied to four horses that pull in opposite directions….all that is left of the poor sod are bloody, gushing stumps. Another victim is forced into a barrel which has long and very sharp nails protruding from all sides. The barrel is then sent rolling down a bumpy hill and when it comes to a shuddering halt, the contents are not a pretty sight. Another more fortunate victim is squished under a mammoth rock. In shades of Friday the 13th the film ends with two travellers who escape the murderous clutches of the 2,000 maniacs and end up recounting the horrors to the local sheriff who looks at them in stunned disbelief. Apparently the town of Pleasant Valley hasn't existed for an age and no one inhabits the area that was once the town - it was all just a dream? The town is a little bit like Armando De Ossorio's ghostly galleon - the one that trawled the waters searching for victims in Horror of the Zombies - but was just a ghostly apparition that turned into murderous reality every now and then. Likewise in 2,000 Maniacs the town of Pleasant Valley and its monstrous inhabitants are ghostly relics of the past - a town that was wiped out viciously during the bitter civil war that is now seething in lust for revenge. Every once in a while the ghostly town materializes in order to exact revenge on innocent northerners who happen to travel through their hallowed turf. After the unbelievable ineptness of Blood Feast this film comes as an astonishingly complex and well crafted and characterized thriller with a socio-political message (excuse me while I have a severe giggling fit). Actually it's a resoundingly terrible film but when compared to Blood Feast it looks like a polished work of art with Oscar winning performances…which says more about the sheer awfulness of Blood Feast rather than the qualities of this slice of splatter. It's surprisingly entertaining though and the gore effects are spectacularly ghastly and shouldn't have disappointed the directors rapidly growing fan base. The acting of Connie Mason, the Playboy Playmate who featured in Feast is still awful despite improvement in leaps and bounds over her effort in her debut role. The other performers are embarrassing but not to the level they were in Feast. However undoubtedly the most frightening aspect of the film is the ghastly collection of country songs that have been composed by H.G. Lewis and feature throughout the movie - They are tortuous at best with the title song (which is given a repeat during the closing credits) being particularly foul.
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