‘2000 Maniacs!’ Is The Unrepeatable Dawn Of Gore
James Francis
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“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 along
And they’ll listen to this song
And they’ll quake in fear to hear this rebel yell”
These lyrics open the knee-slapping banjo-and-guitar earworm theme of 2000 Maniacs!, a song that would have stood out even if this movie bombed. But the notorious 1964 horror film more than rose to the occasion. It’s an outrageous and gory monster that inspired generations of splatter fans and managed to create a few sub-genres as well (not to mention an excellent horror movie name that delivered on its promise).
2000 Maniacs! is a no-budget production from the early days of American exploitation films. When US courts of the 1950s ruled that movies had First Amendment free speech protections, it completely changed the industry. Already a growing underground phenomenon, exploitation exploded into the mainstream.
While the larger studios still stuck to their ways, independents saw the opportunity for alternative content that put butts in theatre seats. It’s fair to say that much of this output was lurid and caused plenty of moral panic. Tales of teenage promiscuity and rebellion (often involving sororities, cars, or motorcycles) seduced kids and scared the hell out of parents. Horror movies also joined in, notably Hammer Horror, which was celebrating a golden age.
Gore effects had started to surface, notably through horrors such as The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1959) and edgy surreal productions like the graphic imagery in France’s Un Chien Andalou (1929) and the hellscapes of Japan’s Jigoku (1960).
But nobody was ready for this…
2000 Maniacs! isn’t the first acknowledged splatter or gore movie. That honor goes to Blood Feast, made by the same people: Herschell Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman. They shot work-for-hire films of the more titillating kind, usually reels of beautiful people running around in scanty swimwear, and funded by theatre owners looking for content.
While doing a job in Miami, they decided to shoot one for themselves that they could sell. But everyone was doing sexy content. What else remained that the big studios wouldn’t touch?
The answer was gore, and the result was Blood Feast, a super low-budget and barely coherent one hour and seven minutes. The lead character basically channels Psycho, released a few years prior, and the rest is just filler to get to the murder set pieces and shots lingering on gory limbs and oozing blood. It’s ridiculously tame, even by the gore that would arrive less than a decade later, but it did the job. People went nuts. Gore cinema had arrived.
Still, Blood Feast was a flash in the pan. Without realizing it, Lewis and Friedman were about to create a whole new genre. Two of them, in fact. They didn’t intend to—they just saw Blood Feast‘s profits and wondered what they could do with a little more time and money.
The pair left for St. Cloud, Florida, the stand-in for the deep Southern town of Pleasant Valley, Georgia. Still working on a shoestring budget (the pair did everything: direct, produce, edit, scriptwriting, sound, and special effects), they enlisted the enthusiastic townspeople to participate. Hiring a handful of actors (including Connie Mason and William Kerwin, returning from Blood Feast), they shot a saga loosely based on the play Brigadoon.
Let’s avoid spoilers and not explain Brigadoon, as it would betray an enticing twist. But while that play is about love, 2000 Maniacs! is about revenge. Bloody, sadistic revenge.
The movie could easily turn the dial on today’s political heat. Its plot is rooted in the American Civil War, and the titular maniacs are hellbent on revenge on the northern ‘Yankees’. Confederate flags adorn Pleasant Valley. At a push, people deep in their political corners might even embrace or attack the theme song as a Confederate anthem.
It is neither, and 2000 Maniacs! is anything but political, though to explain that would be to give away the movie’s twist (it’s a well-known twist, but let’s save some mystery!). Lewis and Friedman were not out to make statements, and it’s a stretch even to call 2000 Maniacs! a statement. This movie is no Birth of a Nation. It’s Hostel, Wrong Turn, and Terrifier. It’s literally their grandpappy.
Blood Feast comes out swinging. The first gore is on-screen within minutes, and it’s pretty uncreative. But 2000 Maniacs! takes its time—almost half an hour passes before the first splatter scene. Overall, there are only four deaths and five gory moments. Yet, 1960s audiences were not prepared. From amputated thumbs to the worst barrel roll imaginable, 2000 Maniacs! shocked with its sadism. Ads for the movie used a still from a particularly shocking moment: a group holds down one of the victims and removes her arm with an axe.
2000 Maniacs! feels almost accidentally surreal, juxtaposing extreme (for its time) horror with an otherworldliness that allows the shocking moments to become entertaining. The opening is jovial. The theme song is fun. The town is celebrating. Though the hillbilly characters are up to no good, it’s hard to get a sense of them. They seem innocent, even childlike. The mayor (played with terrific scene-chewing flair by Jeffrey Allen) gives everything a carnival vibe. “We’re just having fun here,” is the message from the villagers to the audience. At the expense of their six victims, of course.
It might be a low-budget movie, but 2000 Maniacs! is not a bad film (and certainly not ‘so bad it’s good’). It paces well (Lewis, who wrote the script, was a Professor in English Literature and held a PhD in psychology). The bad acting and over-the-top characters make it feel colorful, even fun. That’s the trick: lure the audience in, then spring traps of violence, again and again. It’s classic top-shelf splatter delivery.
Yes, the effects are terrible. But these guys started with nothing. As Lewis has quipped, if they even had Halloween stores, they could have gotten better fake limbs. But they had to do with mannequin arms and bright red blood.
Still, that did the trick. And the rest is history. Legend has it even the great Lucio Fulci has tipped his hat to this classic. Tobe Hooper is on record that it inspired The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)—in fact, 2000 Maniacs! is also the first ‘hillbilly horror’ in tropes, even cannibal barbecues. It didn’t directly inspire The Hills Have Eyes (1977), though by then, hicksploitation horrors had absorbed 2000 Maniacs! into their DNA (amplified by the success of 1972’s Deliverance).
2000 Maniacs! is unrepeatable. The rather unkind reflection of southern ‘hospitality’ and civil war tensions wouldn’t fly if it were a new idea today. And you’d never get away with the plastic special effects, acting, or directing, even if you made a low-budget horror. Standards are too high. Plus, we are far removed from the ‘anything goes’ exploitation movie risk-taking that kept theatres going sixty years ago.
But there is another reason why there can only ever be one 2000 Maniacs! (a lesson learned with the forgettable 2005 remake, 2001 Maniacs!). It did something rare: introducing audiences to a new horror world. 2000 Maniacs! didn’t just throw blood and guts at the screen. It defined a blueprint for extreme horror, balancing pacing and outlandishness before hitting the audience with something they thought they were prepared for.
Herschell Gordon Lewis was dismissive of this idea. He’s made it clear they never sought to create genres or to further horror. They just wanted to make money. If not them, someone else would have done it. He’s probably right. But they did, and it’s called 2000 Maniacs!
Categorized:Editorials
