Two Thousand Maniacs

Two Thousand Maniacs

Yeehar! Ahh, here we go - this truly is the business! Hot on the heels of Tartan's UK DVD debut of Herschell Gordon Lewis's classic 'Blood Feast' comes my own personal favourite from the grue-meisters great collection...'Two Thousand Maniacs!'

The story's been done dozens of times since but Lewis's vintage variation still stands as one of the best. Hillbilly hicks are out for bloody revenge in this tale of a small town full of inbred southerners (that'll be the 'Two Thousand Maniacs' of the title, though a hundred would be more concise) who are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Civil War when some hapless northerners from the big city stray into town (via some underhand redirection) and become the main attraction at the festive proceedings! Bloody Deep South hospitality delivered in a wickedly perverse manner is the order of the day in this cracking vintage B movie classic.

The poor unsuspecting visitors get crushed, hacked and barbecued by the townsfolk in delightfully original (and bloody) style as Lewis confirms once again that he truly was a groundbreaking and influential film maker that influenced countless other film makers in the horror genre (and many in the mainstream too!) Again, with the minimal of budgets Lewis shows no concern to financial restraint with some excellently paced and solid direction and gets splendid performances from his motley crew of actors (with notable kudos going to the southern townsfolk who are delightfully demented throughout bringing a wry smile and many a chuckle to even the most jaded of viewers) and some great gory scenarios that are unleashed to UK viewers for the first time full uncut (which is great news for horror fans this side of the ocean!)

But how does the disc from Tartan fair? A question that will inevitably be asked by Lewis fans more so with Something Weird in the US having released their own DVD edition also. Well, they are both have their good points and it is a tricky decision for the casual buyer to make.

First off, as I mentioned earlier, this UK release from Tartan brings us the film fully uncut for the first time here ever and the print on show is pretty good too. The image in the main is very sharp (considering the age of the source material) with only some minor NTSC transfer showing on the odd occasion. The Something weird disc print is equally nice too. Audio wise, the SW disc contains both English and French audio tracks, of which the dubbed French one is very good but the English track can on occasion be slightly incoherent (in particular with some of the southern characters dialogue) which may be due to the three layered audio track that the SW disc contains. The Tartan disc however contains only an English audio track but this is marginally clearer than the US disc, which helps.

Extras wise, the Tartan release has the Theatrical trailer (also on the SW disc), as well as some up to the minute bio pages ('Two Thousand Maniacs 2001' anyone?) and the cool Herschell Gordon Lewis Collection teaser trailer reel (and the same cool Tartan trailers that appear on the 'Blood Feast' disc), as well as a nice lobby card/image gallery too. But most interestingly (for me anyway) is the inclusion of the films music soundtrack as a 16 track separate extras, and what a great heel tapping ass kicking cool extra it is too! The SW disc meantime does have a full audio commentary by director Lewis and producer Friedman, as well as 16 minutes of out-takes from the film (which like the similar Blood Feast ones will be unlikely to be viewed more than once). Both equally good discs but casual UK buyers should be more than happy with the excellent job Tartan have done with this B movie classic release.

Great schlocko hillbilly fun and a lovely disc to boot. See y'all go check it out now folks!

Review by Alan Simpson


 
Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis
Released by Tartan
Region '0' PAL - Rated 18
Ratio - Original fullscreen
Audio - Mono 2.0
Running time : approx 84 mins
Extras :
Bios, Trailer selection, Film Notes, Stills gallery, Isolated Soundtrack
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