Two Thousand Maniacs!

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Year:	1964
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Herschell Gordon Lewis
Genre:	Splatter origins
Starring:	Connie Mason, William Kerwin, Jeffrey Allen, Shelby Livingston
Rating:	4/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058694/
Tagline:	Gruesomely Stained In Blood Color!
Favourite line:	"....Something is very wrong with this town"

The second in the loosely titled ‘Blood Trilogy’ from the pioneer of splatter.

The plot:
Two separate cars are diverted from the main road, deliberately, so that they are forced to pass through the seemingly innocuous town of Pleasant Valley, in the Southern part of the US. On arrival, the six new Yankee arrivals are informed that they are to be guests of honour at the special centenary celebrations, planned to take place over the next couple of days. Initially confused, the mayor of the town convinces them that they will have a damn fine old time, and they are checked in to the town’s hotel.
Lured from the hotel room, the group are slowly divided and, it soon transpires, they most certainly are the guests of honour, for the townsfolk plan to eat them in a ceremony to commemorate the slaughter that took place in the town during the Civil War, precisely 100 years ago.

Director Herschell Gordon Lewis is oft referred to as the first true splatter director.
Sure, others had dabbled, the most famous example being the shower scene from Psycho, some four years prior, but Lewis took it to an altogether new level.
The plot itself is fairly derisory, though not altogether without structure, but it is used solely as a framework on which to construct scenarios to lead Our Heroes to their untimely demises.
A woman is hacked apart, limbs removed, all of it played out in glorious Technicolor and, whilst some of it certainly looks naïve to modern eyes, it is important to perceive the reaction near fifty years ago, with conservative middle-American audiences exposed to something quite, quite new.
Lewis’ canon, though not as well known as latter splatter-mongers such as Romero, or even Peckinpah, certainly merits mention in cinema history and, whilst this one does not quite reach the heights of the simply excellent Wizard of Gore, still horror buffs should feel obliged to check out all of his genre material – you can skip the earlier nudie films. They are awful, and certainly not worth a look for the sake of titillation, as you see more provocative imagery in an average edition of The Daily Sport.
You’ll struggle if you expect decent performances with this one, but for those interested in the history of cinema, and particularly genre cinema, this is well worth a look.