Pick Of The Month from Jason Bylan - 2000 Maniacs!

Nitrate Stock is pleased to present this new feature, which asks friends, readers and fellow film aficionados to provide their choice for the month's most unmissable flick.

Yeeeeeeehaw!!!

So begins the rousing chorus in the opening credits to "2000 Maniacs" (sung by the director himself, not because he could sing, but because it was cheaper than hiring someone).

Considered the best Herschell Gordon Lewis movie, which admittedly is the cinematic equivalent of like saying "the most comfortable dental chair", 2,000 Maniacs plays out like a fevered dream of a twisted Antebellum South or if Lucio Fucli had directed an episode of "Hee Haw".

Loosely, like really loosely, based on Brigadoon, Lewis' epic masterpiece forewarns the legend of a country ghost town (literally), decimated by Sherman's March (and with the production value of the documentary of the same name) whose massacred occupants re-appear exactly 100 later to sadistically seek revenge on any group of wayward travelers who take the wrong turn at the Mason Dixon line, told much like a lost, grindhouse Twilight Zone episode if Rod Serling was tripping on bad acid.

It's terrible.

But much in the same way is one's first taste of rot gut whisky.  Give it 5 minutes to hit your bloodstream (and some actual alcohol helps) and you will soon find yourself a hootin' and a hollerin' in an intoxicating swirl of low-budget flesh, blood and insanity as you giddily go blood simple.

For this prototypical, kissing-cousin to Torture Porn will forever leave its unwashable, blood red stain on the timeline of cinema due to its unmistakable pedigree. Yes, when it comes to taking blame for who truly started the genre of splat, ex-nudie cutie producer Dave Friedman and ad agent-turned-director Herschell Gordon Lewis have blood on their hands. Most of it really fake looking.

Beloved as "The Godfather Of Gore", Lewis helmed such notorious, drive-in staples as "Blood Feast" and "The Wizard of Gore" but "2000 Maniacs" stands the test of time as his Gone With The Wind... And this is a man most infamously known for staging his actors with the subtlety of a 5th grade school play, dressing his sets with the richness of a thrift store window and shooting his mise-en-scene with the aplomb of Skyping.

It is true, Lewis movies has been called "no good". And that was by Lewis.

But one does not go to a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie for its artistic sensibilities any more than one goes to a butcher shop for social commentary. You go to get a cheap, tawdry buzz and 2000 Maniacs is pure swig of un-distilled, cinematic moonshine. Who cares if the production amateurish, the budget cheap and the plot basically the Hicksploitation version of The Fog. Look away, Dixieland.

For it's all just an excuse for the Godfather of Gore to stage set piece after set piece of gonzo, over-the-top grizzle, mutilation, cannibalism and to give its star, former Playboy Playmate Connie Mason, a chance to prove to the world that she can do more than show a little skin, but also whatever organs she had underneath.

Yet for all of its lascivious tawdriness, there's almost an element of... sweetness to it? Like the eponymous 2,000 maniacs whose story it portrays (and it's more like "20"), the movie itself now seems forever trapped in a time-warp, a lost moment of genre innocence doomed to repeat in a 35mm loop, a spectacle that was deemed sick and salacious, according to 1964. So maybe it's just Lewis' hokey staging, the bright, over-saturated colors or the Waiting For Guffman like quality of the acting but the deviant thrills that await inside end up feeling less like the mean-spirited strand of current horror and more like an antiquated splatter version of The Country Bear Jamboree.

So grab yerself a partner (and hopefully a flask, trust me) and head on down to BAM to see a true, historic, genre milestone, a fun crowd-pleaser, or at least, The Beverly Hillbillies on bathsalts.

Because after over a century... if for only one night, The South will rise again. Albeit in Brooklyn, cheaply, and with a little help from a Jewish advertising executive from Pittsburgh.

-Jason Bylan

2000 MANIACS screens tonight, 9:30pm at BAM Cinematek as part of their series A Time For Burning: Cinema of the Civil Rights Movement. And yeah I'm not kidding. Feel free to e-mail me at joew@nitratestock.net with your monthly picks!