I love Herschell Gordon Lewis movies, and this one was no exception, but I have to say that this one didn't really meet up to Blood Feast standards. Two Thousand Maniacs! is the second film is Herschell Gordon Lewis' Blood Trilogy, and yet it came up lacking when compared to it's earlier predecessor.

The basic story of the film involves a southern town called Pleasant Valley that's about to celebrate it's centennial. Part of that celebration involved diverting six yankees from the highway and getting them into town to be the "special guests" of the two day celebration. Unfortunately, there's a sinister plan hiding behind the joviality of the celebration. See, during the Civil War, a renegade group of yankees came through the town, killing and mutilating countless numbers of it's residents. Now, one hundred years later, the town is celebrating it's centennial and the plan is to murder the six yankees in a mostly symbolic act of revenge for their murdered forefathers. To this end, Rufus and Lester put some detour signs out on the highway and manage to divert two cars into town, giving them their six yankee victims. Early on, they're all suspicious of the towns celebration and it's motives, yet they go along with it until they can get something concrete to confirm their suspicions. Unfortunately for them, Tom, being the inquisitive school teacher that he is, is the only one to figure out what's really going on. By the time he does though, it's already too late for the others, and he really only has time to save Terry. The rest all become victims of the town's festival of revenge. There is an interesting twist at the end of the film that genuinely surprised me, but I won't ruin it here. Suffice it to say that it adds quite a bit of interest to the rest of the story.

In general, Two Thousand Maniacs! had all the elements that could have made it a great film, but it lacked in the most important element of all...the gore. Blood Feast succeeded because it had quirky characters, bad acting, cheap music, and gore that was in your face and the focus of every single murder in the film. That's where this film went wrong. It was more focused on the method of the murder than it was of the result of it. After Herschell's success with Blood Feast, I can't imagine why he would hold back on the gore with this one. What little gore there was was overly fake looking and was only seen in relatively short shots without much focus on the bloody results of the violence. The only time they really focused on any of the gore and tried to make it meaty looking was when Harper cut off Bea's thumb and then later when her arm was cut off. Even in that scene, when Rufus picks up the severed arm, it's completely stiff and looks like a mannequin's arm. There was no effort put into realism at all. But despite the lack of gore, this film did have it's good points.

William Kerwin and Connie Mason who did a wonderfully goofy job together in Blood Feast both turn in great performances. The acting on both their parts was quite good and Connie Mason wasn't actually reading her lines in an obvious way at any point as she did in the first film. The rest of the cast did a great job as well including over the top performances by Ben Moore as Lester and Gary Bakeman as Rufus. Those two really sold their parts and came off as a couple of moronic hillbillies who looked like they'd be right at home hanging around the backsides of various farm animals and drinking moonshine. I mean sure, the acting seemed a little awkward sometimes, but that's one of the things that adds charm to a film like this and makes it fun to watch. The other thing that's necessary for the actors to work with their roles well and for the movie itself to be a success is a well written story. In this case, the story was well written with a lot of creative ways to kill people and it really gave the actors a chance to play up their parts to the fullest.

Technically, the film had a few problems that made it difficult to watch at times. Most of the night scenes were overly dark, which made it difficult to follow what was going on at times, and the dialogue was at times hard to hear due to low recording levels, room reverb, and overly loud music. The barrel scene in particular had an interesting quirk. The dialogue was mixed in after the fact because it was a bit of a distance shot and it was outside, but the audio was running at the wrong speed when they mixed it in. This led to Mayor Buckman and Lester both talking slower and in deeper pitched voices than they should have. The whole thing was rather amusing, though I did wonder briefly if maybe my DVD player wasn't playing the movie at the right speed. Fortunately, a quick click and an observation of the movements of the people in the scene confirmed that it was.

Overall, Two Thousand Maniacs! isn't an awesome film, but it is quite good and some of the characters, especially Lester and Rufus, really make it a lot of fun to watch. Herschell Gordon Lewis really needed to give us another gore spectacular after raising our expectations with the far superior Blood Feast, but failed to deliver on what could have been by far the coolest part of this movie. I mean, when I guy gets rolled down the hill in a barrel with nails sticking through it or a girl is killed by having a huge rock dropped on her, I wanna see the results! Don't show me bloodstained clothes where the blood looks way thicker and more red than it should. I wanna see the ripped up meaty goodness in all it's splendor. That is after all why we watch these films. It's not for the bad acting (although that's a part of it), and it's not for the story or the music or anything else. We wanna see the gore, and when it's not delivered, we're left feeling a little short changed.