By Lane Van Ham
Suff Reporter
"Yee-haw! We got us a real
blood-n-grlts thriller this week!
"I bet on Robert E. Lee’s corpse
you 'll be crazy for this one. Maybe
you 'll even be inspired, as l know 1
was . . . sniff sniff. . . hmm, that
barbeque is about ready... What
can 1 say? Gore right out and get
this! See you all next week... heh
heh-heh!"
The ads screamed: “MADNESS
INCARNATE! Brutal . . . evil . . .
ghastly beyond belief!” It was 1964,
a year after the pioneering first
“gore” movie, “Blood Feast.”
“Blood Feast” had been made on
$24,000 and had little as far as plot,
but had been a big draw at the box
office. It’s director, Herschell Gor
don Lewis, was looking for an
other such feature, this time with
better production and story, but
the same essential attraction:
blood.
What he and producer David
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Maniacs,” the second of his famous
gore trilogy (the third would be
“Color Me Blood Red,” about an
artist who paints with . . . you
guessed it!).
The movie opens with one of
the coolest theme songs of all-time,
“The South’s Gonna Rise Again!”
while two of the maniacs set up
phony detours to get
“darnnyankees” into their town,
Pleasant Valley. There’s nothing
particularly insidious about that —
except that it reminded me of
something that would happen on
the “Dukes of Hazzard.”
Pleasant Valley, it turns out, is
having a Centennial celebration,
and they need six Northerners as
guests of honor. The mayor ex
plains all this to the confused trav
ellers (two couples travelling to
gether and a woman named Terri
Adams who has picked up hitch
hiker Tom White) and the obnox
ious townfolk laugh at everything
he says. What’s going on here?
They wonder, but decide to stay.
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ber one.”
Asany viewer can tell, things are
about to break apart. The mayor
and some of the good ol’ boys
manage to separate one couple
(Johnny and Bea), and once Bea’s
thumb is cut off, the fun has begun.
Wa-hoo!
That night, the town is treated to
a barbeque that brings new mean
ing to the phrase "mystery meat,”
and buxom villager Betsy gets
Johnny drunk for the horse race.
As this is going on, Terri and
Tom discover the secret behind the
town centennial, which was never
explained. Nearby, on a com
memorative plaque, an inscription
tells of six renegade Union soldiers
who wiped out the town 100 years
ago. Pleasant Valley, Population
2,000, is inhabited by revenge
crazy maniacs!
I don’t want to diminish the
importance of this ultimately life
saving discovery, but were they in
town they might be able to witness
the horse race, as Johnny is drawn
and quartered by the town’s finest
thoroughbreds.
Events for the next day feature a
creative barrel roll and the rock
judging contest, where a Yankee
gal is tied below a huge rock while
townfolk throw softballs at a target
to make it fall on her (sort of like a
dunking booth). After every throw
she has to say, “It hasn’t fallen yet.”
Tom and Terri, by this time,
have decided to skip out on this
little bash (so to speak) and get a
little kid named Billy to show them
where Terri’s car is hidden. The
disappointed maniacs watch their
escape, distressed that the much
anticipated axe-throwing contest
will never come about.
Justice lovers will probably be
disappointed by the ending, where
the maniacs get off scot-free: as it
turns out, no one has lived in
Pleasant Valiev since the massacre
100 years ago, and for the past two
days, they’ve been in the company
of ghosts! Oooh! They hang a
miniature noose Billy had on the
rear view mirror as “a souvenier,”
and drive off into the sunset.
The essential appeal of “2,000
Maniacs” was, of course, blood.
Herschell Gordon Lewis says in
Re/Search’s "Incredibly Strange
Films" that “blood is the ultimate
symbol. It’s the one symbol every
one understands. There is power
to blood. It has emotional impact
unlike any other on earth.”
Yet Lewis uses remarkable re
straint compared to today’s gore
films, so overblown the blood has
really ceased to be, dare I say,
relevant. For example, when the
drawing and quartering scene oc
curs, allwe see is a horse dragging
a human arm behind it.
To audiences in the sixties,
though, this was a big deal -- a
liberation of cinema just as the beat
writers were to poetry, The Beatles
and Elvis to music, and drugs to
Lane Van Horn/ Dally Nebraskan
perception. It is clear from Lewis’
interviews that, above all in his
film-making philosophy, is consid
eration of the audience.
i
not mean catering to predictable
success and choosing formulas
which have proven successful in
the past. It means making a movie
that will be impressive to those in
the theater and not the people who
vote for the Oscars.
I doubt that the splatter films of
today will hold up in 25 years the
same way “2,000 Maniacs” does.
We aren’t impressed with the mini
mal blood loss or the obvious
mannequin arms. But Lewis suc
ceeded in creating some off the
wall character interaction and a
silly story that’s fun to watch un
ravel.
It has gore, psychos, quicksand,
confederate flags, and a cast that
will probably remind you of the
“Hee-l law” show with knives. Plus
there’s the rip-roaring tunes of the
“Pleasant Valley Boys,” but don’t
be fooled -- Lewis himself sang the
theme song because he didn’t want
to pay a singer!
“There’s a story you should
know/From a hundred years ago/
And a hundred years we’ve waited
now to tell./Now the Yankees
come a long/And they’ll listen to
this song/And they’ll quake in fear
to hear this rebel yell/Yee-hoo! Oh,
the South’s gonna rise again!”
“2,000 Maniacs” is available at
several video outlets in Lincoln.
A complete
set of
instructions
for the
first-time
smoker.
don’t
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