Brutal... Evil... Ghastly... Beyond Belief!!! The second film in Herschell Gordon Lewis' infamous `Blood Trilogy' (begun with 'Blood Feast' and completed with 'Color Me Blood Red') 'Two Thousand Maniacs!' was an attempt to both out-gore Blood Feast and make a gruesome horror movie with production values above those of its predecessor... Not only is this release digitally remastered but it's also uncut too! To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Civil War the inhabitants of a small Southern US town organise the festival to end all festivals. With a captured audience of North Americans the townsfolk amuse themselves by playing roll-the-man-in-the-nail-lined-barrel and compete at target practice using a pretty girl and a boulder. With all this chaos erupting around them a young couple make a desperate attempt to leave the town before they too fall victim to Two Thousand Maniacs!
Available "fully uncut" for the first time in the UK, Two Thousand Maniacs! is the second of director HG Lewis' "blood" trilogy. Though the "once-in-a-lifetime" title makes a promise no film could keep--only about 30 maniacs show up--and the level of gore is a notch or so down from Blood Feast--only four deaths--this is perhaps the director's most watchable film. The Brigadoon-derived plot nugget concerns a Deep South town (variously suggested to be in Georgia or Arkansas, but actually Florida) wiped out by Union raiders during the Civil War, which reappears once every 100 years to wreak "blood vengeance". For the centennial celebrations, Pleasant Valley lures Yankee tourists off the road and subjects them to gruesome fairground games--a cannibal BBQ, a "horse-race", a "barrel roll" and "teetering rock". The ideas are nasty, and Lewis even attempts subtlety by keeping the quartering and the spiked barrel inside mostly off screen, but the creepiest touch is the "aw-shucks" good humour with which the ghostly Confederate maniacs--led by a mayor who is the spitting image of Sergeant Bilko's Colonel Hall--treat their horrible sport. It has the usual Lewis drawbacks--mostly inept staging, acting that veers between the wooden ("Playmate" Connie Mason) and the amateurishly hammy (one of the worst child actors in film history), clumsy editing, community theatre production values--but his fans wouldn't have it any other way and the hayseed music is great! On the DVD: The full-screen image is as good as this ever will look, considering Lewis' primitive understanding of lighting cinematography, with rich scarlet blood, vividly ugly 1963 leisurewear and very few print imperfections. The features offer an imaginative "Welcome to Pleasant Valley Centennial" menu, with buttons like the target you have to hit to drop the "teetering rock" on the Yankee; lurid original trailer ("Two thousand maniacs crazed for carnage started bathing a whole town in pulsing, human blood ... brutal, evil, ghastly beyond belief"); filmographies for Lewis, Friedman and star William Kerwin (aka Thomas Wood); promotional art gallery; notes by aptly-monickered expert Billy Chainsaw, highlighting the connections with John Waters and Brigadoon; a teaser trailer for "the Herschell Gordon Lewis Collection"; a mass of trailers for other "Tartan terror" titles. The Lewis-Friedman commentary and mind-numbing outtakes reel available on the Region 1 DVD are sadly absent, but that release doesn't have this one's major bonus addition--the entire soundtrack album, with compositions by Lewis himself (including the immortal "Yee-Hah, the South's Gonna Rise Again") and Flatt and Scruggs (of Bonnie and Clyde fame). --Kim Newman
Do you want to be a better dancer have fun and learn some sik moves along the way? Locking is the must have DVD full of the coolest moves seen on any Dance TV series today. Learn Street Dance: Locking is the definitive Street Dance DVD series. Feel the essence and excitement of real street dance performed by top instructors. You will learn all the foundation skills and 3 fully choreographed fresh routines broken down ranging from beginner all the way up to advanced. Every move is broken down step by step with clear instruction so you can progress at a pace that suits you and uses multi-angle to be able to step clearly from different angles. No matter what level you are this DVD will help you become the dancer you've always wanted to be.
When a gang of thieves hiding out in a circus sideshow decides to steal from the wealthy owner there are horrific consequences!
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