Review of Two Thousand Maniacs!

Introduction

The inhabitants of a small Southern US town organise a festival celebrating the 100th anniversary of the civil war.
With a captured audience of North Americans the towns people set out to organise a festival to end all festivals and show special attention to the welcome visitors.
The film almost being a perverted twist on the fantasy musical `Brigadoon` at first starts out in an oddball comedy kind of way when two guys from the community of Pleasant Valley detour a couple of passing cars into their small nearby town.
On arrival these strangers find that the town is in celebration and are welcomed as honorary guests to precede over the festival. It soon becomes clear though that this is no ordinary town and that the people are mighty strange. With no way out, the strangers fight for there lives when they discover that they are the main course on the towns peoples menu and that fun and games here are at the expense of their lives.

Originally released in 1964 to exploit the teenage drive in audience, `Two thousand maniacs!` was director Herschell Gordon Lewis`s second film in what would be later known as the `Blood Trilogy`. Labelled the `Godfather of Gore`, H.G.Lewis was one of the first filmmakers to actually exploit the audience`s lust for gore and graphic violence in a Grand Guignol, dare you to watch kind of way. As such, much of the production is obviously focussed on the set up of more and more outlandish ways to kill people and much of the usual technical aspects such as proper sound recording, film framing and editing have obviously been ignored to keep the budget as low as possible. The emphasis is clearly on trying to shock the audience by showing as much blood as possible, and I dare say it worked at the time it was released. You have to keep in mind that this film was shot to exploit the drive in theatres and the teenage audience of that time where by a gimmick to attract the young people, who would half of the time just go to meet up with friends and not necessarily to watch the films, would be needed.

You can see how this `dare you to watch` kind of film would be attractive, especially with the guys taunting there unsuspecting girlfriends to watch the gory parts. Today of course this seems pretty tame and the effects are in the most part just focussed on blood with the odd arm being chopped off. But what is unsettling is the way in which it was shot. Most of the film is framed in an off balance kind of way with odd close-ups and in your face angles which would of worked great on a big screen but seem oddly out of place here. Editing is jumpy, as well as the story which is all over the place. The cast are very amateurish, delivering lines in a stilted fashion with no emotion, which at times gives the film an almost real life kind of feel to it.

In fact this odd, ineptitude is what gives the audience a sense of discomfort. A lot of the film is almost comedic, with over the top performances by the townsfolk in what first seems to be a camp, oddball comedy. The appearance of the towns band throughout the film also adds to the weird, but often funny out of place feeling that the movie aims to present. This juxtaposition of comedy and horror works in its favour, making the audience at times feel strangely detached from the real world.

As an exploitation movie the film certainly works and fulfils its aims to unsettle the audience not just by the violence shown but more by the sense of the otherworldly disjointedness that, whether intentional or not, the filmmakers have succeeded in portraying.
The fascination with the deep South and it`s mainstay of inbred, misfits and freaks have been the staple diet of many a horror movie, and this one has just as many myths and stereotypes typical in the horror film genre as other more successful `stranger caught in a remote place with blood lusted locals` films that American filmmakers so seem to enjoy.

This film certainly isn`t for everybody and I doubt that anyone apart from the fans of the genre would be interested in such a film. On the outside `Two Thousand Maniacs` is pretty much a mess and definitely a film of its time. The casual viewer would not find a lot to be happy about here, but dig down a little and give it some thought and you may just be surprised at how unsettled you feel after watching it.

Video

Presented in a fullframe aspect ratio, "Two Thousand Maniacs" is rather a mixed bag in the picture department.
Given the low budget and targeted at a drive in audience, this was never going to be a particularly pretty film and it shows all the usual limitations you would normally expect from a film of this genre.
The transfer, colour wise is quite muted and appears washed out at times although contrast levels remain satisfactory. The print is also quite soft with little detail and there is a small amount of dot crawl and grain in some of the shots. Suprisingly the picture is fairly clean from dirt and scratches and when they do appear they are rarely distracting. The print does suffer from some really bad edits and scene transitions though, where the film elements jump and deteriorate in colour and definition. This of course is a result of the source material and given the history of this film is not particularly suprising. To be honest I was expecting a lot worse and if you`re a fan of this film then I doubt you have seen it look better.

Audio

Presented in the original monaural mix, the audio track is really quite poor.
Apparently the dialogue track was never put through post production and instead left as it was originally recorded on set. Volume levels and ambience are inconsistent from scene to scene and the noise levels on the track are always high enough to be a nuisance. There`s lots of crackles and pops throughout the track and the general quality can instantly shift mid scene depending on the cuts made. Dynamics and response are of course very flat and dead.
Music is a little better with some real catchy hill-Billy tunes straight from the deep south, but hiss and crackles as always are still very distracting.

Features

Special features include star and director filmographies, a small stills and artwork gallery and the original theatrical trailer which shows all the killings in the film and gives away what little plot there is. (so don`t watch it if you haven`t seen the film)
Best extra has to be the soundtrack feature which has available all the movies music available from a menu. 16 tracks are available and range from incidental music to confederate songs played using the banjo. If only there was an animated inbred Billy bob playing on the menu. Most of the films score in fact was composed by the director Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Oh well, you`ll just have to dress up in old dungarees and put an elastic band over a ruler for a banjo. You can imagine you`ve just married your cousin and are axing out those hill Billy tunes in delight in front of your slack jawed dancing family.
Also included are film notes by Billy chainsaw (don`t ask) which give some useful background on the film and a general trailer for Hershell Gordon Lewis films and another for Tartan Terror films.
Apparently a commentary track is available on the region 1 DVD featuring the Director and Producers which is strangely missing here. Probably a licensing problem made this track unavailable and instead we were given the soundtrack feature.

Conclusion

A strange and unsettling film that will appeal only to those interested in the historical significance of the film and of course the gore hounds, although they may be disappointed at the effects.
Picture quality is adequate although audio quality is quite poor.
Even though quite tame for today`s standards this film is certainly not one for the squeamish or easily shocked.