Two Thousand Maniacs!

Two Thousand Maniacs! is a 1964 American supernatural splatter film written and directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis and starring William Kerwin, Connie Mason, Jeffrey Allen, Ben Moore, and Gary Bakeman. It follows a group of Northern tourists who are savagely tortured and murdered during a ghostly Confederate celebration of a small Georgia community's centennial. The story was inspired by the 1947 Lerner and Loewe musical Brigadoon, which also features a spectral town that manifests once every hundred years, populated by ghosts of its past inhabitants.

Shot in Florida and released in mid-1964, Two Thousand Maniacs! screened largely at drive-in theaters, and performed particularly well in the Southern United States. The film was met with some controversy due to its graphic depiction of violence, receiving significant cuts by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and being banned in the city of Chicago by the local police department and film board. Despite this, the film proved to be a financial success, and remained in circulation at drive-in theaters in the United States through the 1970s.

Two Thousand Manaics! has been noted by critics as an early example of hicksploitation in exploitation films, as well as for its sensationalizing of national perceptions between the North and South. The theme of social class differences between the regions has been cited as a prominent feature of the film. It also contains elements of supernatural horror, and its structure has been acknowledged as an influence on the contemporary slasher film.

The film was preceded by Lewis's Blood Feast (1963) and followed by Color Me Blood Red (1965), as part of what Lewis and film scholars have described as the director's "Splatter Trilogy." A remake titled 2001 Maniacs was released in 2005.

In 1965, two rednecks named Rufus and Lester use detour signs to lure six young tourists into their rural town of Pleasant Valley, Georgia. Upon their arrival, they are warmly welcomed by the townsfolk, and are introduced to some of them, including Rufus, Lester, and town mayor Earl Buckman. The tourists are invited to be "guests of honor" for their centennial celebration being held over the weekend. The mayor promises to provide the tourists complimentary hotel rooms, free food and entertainment throughout the celebration, and the visitors decide to go along with it.

That night, while one of the tourists, Bea Miller, is alone in her hotel room, she gets a call from local store owner Harper, who invites her to take a walk with him. She accepts the invitation and he leads her into the woods nearby, where he suddenly takes out a knife and cuts off one of her fingers. Bea is then accosted by Buckman, Rufus, and Lester. As the other three hold her down, Rufus hacks off her arm with an axe, killing her.

Meanwhile, two other tourists, Tom White and his girlfriend Terry Adams, have growing suspicions about the town. During a barbecue later that night (where, unbeknownst to the tourists, Bea's arm is being slowly spit-roasted), Tom quietly leads Terry away to a plaque he found in the woods, which states that a group of renegade Union soldiers massacred much of the Pleasant Valley townsfolk near the end of the Civil War in 1865. They realize that this "centennial" is really an act of revenge for the destruction of the town one hundred years ago, and that they and the other tourists are the intended victims. Buckman, Rufus, and Lester spot Tom and Terry and chase after them, but the couple manages to escape.

Meanwhile, back at the festivities, Harper's girlfriend Betsy gets Bea's husband John drunk on moonshine while the final two tourists, David and Beverly Wells, secretly watch. After Harper escorts the couple back to the hotel, the townspeople surround John and tie both his arms and legs to four horses that are sent running in different directions, dismembering him.