Two Thousand Maniacs!

In an interview with Reel.com, producer David F. Friedman recalled the origins of Two Thousand Maniacs!: "I had been to New York and seen Brigadoon, a musical play about a little Scottish town that comes to life every hundred years. I came home and was telling Herschell [Gordon Lewis] about this play. Herschell, although he was from Chicago, was absolutely fascinated with the South. He had taught at Southern Mississippi, was a professor of English there. One of the reasons he and I got along was he had always thought I was an Alabama redneck - which I am! He said, "How about a little Southern town that was massacred by the Yankees in 1864 and comes to life in 1964? From that came the screenplay for Two Thousand Maniacs!." Friedman traveled to the South to scout locations and discovered a sleepy little town near Orlando named St. Cloud that was the ideal setting. So in October of 1963, Two Thousand Maniacs! was filmed in St. Cloud, Florida on a shooting schedule of approximately 14 days with a budget of around $62,000. Both Lewis and Friedman have stated the residents and city council of St. Cloud, Florida welcomed the filmmakers and cast with open arms and were completely supportive and cooperative during filming, allowing the crew access to shoot wherever they wanted. According to Lewis, it was like one giant family affair and the entire shoot was an absolute joy. Actress Connie Mason (who also starred inBlood Feast) was reportedly difficult and frustrating to work with. The main reason she was brought back to star in Two Thousand Maniacs! was so they could exploit that fact that she was a recent Playboy Playmate (Miss June 1963), a detail that fit in very well with the lurid marketing campaign. In the garage sequence towards the end of the film, Lewis states that he actually had to cut out lines of her dialogue because she couldn't remember them...even after they had been written on the dashboard of the car. Compiled by Eric Weber Sources: Audio commentary by director Herschell Gordon Lewis and producer David F. Friedman on the Something Weird DVD release of Two Thousand Maniacs!, released by Image Entertainment in 2000. Shock Value: A Tasteful Book about Bad Taste, John Waters, 1981 a Delta Book published by Dell Publishing. www.reel.com

A few of the taglines used to promote Two Thousand Maniacs!: An Entire Town Bathed In Pulsing Human Blood! Madmen Crazed For Carnage! Gruesomely Stained In Blood Color! A town of madmen crazed for carnage! The film is often referred to as 2000 Maniacs. The film's working title was Centennial. All of the extras in Two Thousand Maniacs! are residents of St. Cloud, Florida. Herschell Gordon Lewis considers Two Thousand Maniacs! his favorite and subsequently the best of his gore trilogy. "First of all," he said in an interview (with Paul Bistoff), "Two Thousand Maniacs! has respectable acting in it. It has a different kind of horror. It has mounting horror; it's not just mindless gore. And I wrote the script, and it's my voice on the soundtrack doing the sing-song opening theme. Not that I'd ever felt like an auteur, I don't dare take that posture with movies that were that cheap." Two Thousand Maniacs! is the second installment in the "Blood Trilogy" or the "Splatter Trilogy". It's preceded by the infamous Blood Feast in 1963 and followed by Color Me Blood Red in 1965. The main theme song of the film, "The Rebel Yell (The South's Gonna Rise Again)" was written and performed by Herschell Gordon Lewis. Actor Jerome Eden who plays John Miller in Two Thousand Maniacs! appeared in all three of the "Blood Trilogy" films. Editor Robert L. Sinise is the father of actor Gary Sinise. Two Thousand Maniacs! was released with a paperback novelization written by Herschell Gordon Lewis. H.G. Lewis described his approach to audience expectations for Two Thousand Maniacs! in RESearch: Incredibly Strange Films: " We pull them up short, because just when they think they've got it, they don't have it...In Two Thousand Maniacs!, you're never quite sure until that first thumb comes off, and from that moment, we've got 'em! That audience doesn't know what to do! We have them! How many films are there where the production keeps the audience in such an unsettled state that the audience literally doesn't know what to do? They're afraid to leave their seats because that's a sign of cowardice. They're afraid to watch because they're afraid of what they'll see. But the one thing that does happen is they leave the theatre not feeling cheated!." Director John Waters paid homage to Herschell Gordon Lewis and Two Thousand Maniacs! when titling his 1970 underground masterpiece, Multiple Maniacs. Waters has always been an enormous fan of Lewis' films, so much so that he included direct references and scenes from Blood Feast in his 1994 comedy, Serial Mom. Also, in his 1981 memoir, Shock Value, Waters sits down with Lewis for a lengthy and entertaining interview. The movie's title inspired the name for the alternative rock band, 10,000 Maniacs. In 2005, Tim Sullivan wrote and directed a pseudo sequel/remake to the film called 2001 Maniacs and featured horror icon Robert Englund (famous for portraying Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street films) as the evil Mayor Buckman. As of late 2008, a sequel to that film is in production entitled, 2001 Maniacs: Beverly Hellbillys, also directed and written by Tim Sullivan. Interestingly, the city of St. Cloud, Florida is about to commence their own Centennial Celebration in 2009! The city was founded in 1909 and the city plans a series of events culminating with celebration festivities on April 18, 2009. Compiled by Eric Weber SOURCES: Herschell Gordon Lewis interview by Andrea Juno, Mark Pauline and Boyd Rice, RESearch: Incredibly Strange Films www.monstersatplay.com St.cloud.org stcloud100.rogueherald.com Audio commentary by director Herschell Gordon Lewis and producer David F. Friedman on the Something Weird DVD release of Two Thousand Maniacs!, released by Image Entertainment in 2000. Shock Value: A Tasteful Book about Bad Taste, John Waters, 1981 a Delta Book published by Dell Publishing. Imdb.com Allmovie.com Wikipedia.com

"...it may not have the 'tremendous production values' claimed by its maker but, technically, it's undeniably an advance on Blood Feast [1963], with a more literate script, varied and attractive locations (St. Cloud, Florida, now the site of Disneyworld), reasonable acting and relatively mobile camera. It's still extremely gory, however..." - The Encyclopedia of Horror Movies, edited by Phil Hardy "After the incredible Blood Feast, gore master H.G. Lewis made this unique look at Southern hospitality...The unsettlingly graphic effects still make it hard for many people to take." - Michael Weldon, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film "2000 Maniacs is better than expected and not nearly as nasty as one is lead to believe...the imaginative staging of the set-pieces, suggests Lewis was a director of promise." - The Camera Journal, from the Cambridge University film journal edited by Paul Sutton, 2007. http://thecamerajournal.blogspot.com/2007/09/2000-maniacs.html "There is an inspired lunacy in Two Thousand Maniacs!, a frantic madness that infiltrates nearly every aspect of this film...The film is actually more fun than frightening, a rootin' tootin' hee hawin' good time that, like Mountain Dew, will tickle your innards (as it slowly removes them...). When you have ghastly set pieces with names like "Old Teetering Rock" and "The Barrel Roll," you can tell that someone has their tongue firmly planted somewhere. Sure, they are still bloody and detailed, but they also smack of the gleefully extremist tone in place from the beginning." - Judge Bill Gibron, DVD Verdict "Two Thousand Maniacs! contains plenty of humor, courtesy of the colorful Southern characters. There's also a superb, banjo-fueled score (again by Lewis), including the super-catchy theme song (sung by Lewis!) with its chorus of `Yeeeee-ha! Oh, the South's gonna rise again!' Unfolding with the logic of a bad dream and blessed with fairly decent production values (relatively speaking, of course), Two Thousand Maniacs! is an unabashed classic of exploitation cinema. While Blood Feast is essential because it was the first gore film, Two Thousand Maniacs! is a must-see because it was the first great gore film." – Reel.com review by Mike Gregory. http://www.reel.com/movie.asp?MID=41356&PID=10082699&buy=closed&Tab=reviews&CID=18#tabs "From its genuinely catchy theme song...to its effectively creepy ending, this is easily Herschell Gordon Lewis' best film. Lewis proves to be a much more assured filmmaker here, contributing some surprisingly good camerawork and an effective opening credits sequence." – "The Horror Film", 1989 Cinebooks, Inc. "This splatter update of Brigadoon succeeds in being genuinely sardonic, slickly paced, memorably scored and even downright entertaining...this is easily H.G.'s best effort, and even those disinclined to Lewis in particular, or gore in general, may well find this one as much fun as we did." – "The Phantom's Ultimate Video Guide", The Phantom of the Movies, 1989 Dell Trade Paperback. "This is by far the best of the Blood Trilogy...the story and the acting are slightly better in this one than in the others and the killings are "fun". They're surrealistic enough not to be believed and it's all done with a wink and nudge, unlike today's `this could happen to you' horror." – The Digital Bits, review by Todd Doogan, 4/21/2000 http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviews/bloodtrilogy.html "Though boasting marginally better production values and direction than its immediate predecessor, Blood Feast, the second part of the so-called Blood Trilogy produced by David Friedman and directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis is again a fundamentally awful film by conventional standards of good cinema, its primary raison d'être a willingness to push the boundaries of graphic gore." - Kinocite, http://www.kinocite.co.uk/18/1889.php "...there's a surprising amount of energy here most of the time, and I attribute this to a variety of reasons. For one thing, it wasn't produced by Lewis himself, and the budget was somewhat higher than is usually the case for his movies. But the biggest reasons may be the use of crowd scenes and the bluegrass music of the Pleasant Valley Boys; both of these elements add a marked energy to the proceedings." – Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings, review by Dave Sindelar, 2/25/2007 http://www.scifilm.org/musing2023.html "Two Thousand Maniacs! is a gem of a little film from 1964. It's got charm and gore and it's entertaining. How many films can say they have all 3? You'll keep humming the music once it's finished as well." – Popcorn Pictures.co.uk http://www.popcornpictures.co.uk/tfilms/2000maniacs.shtml "Two Thousand Maniacs! is usually spoken of as one of the best of Herschell Gordon Lewis's films because it has an unusual twist ending that gives it something more – a unique surprise that turns it into sort of a splatter version of Brigadoon (1954). Some of the anachronisms, like why the Confederates are driving around in 20th Century cars, are never adequately explained, nevertheless it is intriguing. Lewis himself also composes a truly amazing Confederate bluegrass song that acts as the film's theme. There is the usual bad acting for a Lewis film, although the show is fairly much stolen by Vincent Santo as the obnoxious kid Billy." – Moria: The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review. http://www.moria.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3870Itemid=1 Compiled by Eric Weber

Tourist: "He's not only a hitchhiker, he's a party pooper." Mayor Buckman (Jeffrey Allen): "We're celebratin' somethin' that happened over a hundred years ago. It's a big deal around here, and part of the ceremony is that we get us some strangers from up north. Ya get everythin' free. It's an honor damn it!" Tourist: "Such a strange little affair, it's almost like Halloween." Tourist: "Mr. Buckman, what is that on that spit over there?" Mayor Buchman: "Oh, that's nothing. That's just part of the Centennial...symbolic...I think that's the word that it is." Tom White (William Kerwin): "Look, officer, I don't know how to convince you of this, but... we're not crazy!" Policeman (Andy Wilson): "Mister, I didn't say you was crazy. Nothing like that, I just think it's mighty peculiar!" Mayor Buckman: "We got ourselves the makin's for a barbecue." Tom White: "Has it occurred to you that nobody has told us what this Centennial is all about? Now, this is 1965, and a hundred years ago it was 1865, right? So, what happened in 1865?" Terry Adams (Connie Mason): "It was the ending of Civil War. The War Between States!" Tom White: "Well then you tell me why would a Southern town want Northerners as guests of honor at the Centennial. It must have something to do with what happened a hundred years ago. So, something is very wrong with this town." Tom White: "... this Centennial is a Centennial of blood vengeance! It means... it means we're here to be killed!" Rufus Tate (Gary Bakeman): "We got us some good 'uns! Dogged if we don't!" Compiled by Eric Weber