Two Thousand Maniacs! by Herschell Gordon Lewis

Loosely inspired by the 1947 stage musical Brigadoon, Two Thousand Maniacs! is about a quaint Southern community called Pleasant Valley that rises mysteriously from the mist every century so that its residents can take revenge for having been wiped out in the Civil War by renegade Union soldiers in 1865. What the hell was this thing? I soon found out. All I knew was that this tape had tremendous cover art: a leering closeup of a woman’s face with blood trickling out one side of her mouth.

At the time, I had no idea who Lewis even was, let alone the influence he’d had on other filmmakers. But my all-time greatest find at Michigan Video was Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964). They stocked some more oddball titles, like Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and Shock Treatment (1981), and they were probably the only place in Genesee County that rented laserdiscs. To get anything out of the ordinary, though, I knew I had to go to the Michigan Video in Flint. I can still remember how they had Witchcraft (1988) and all its sequels lined up on one long shelf. Sometime in the mid-to-late ’90s, Family Video came in and sort of flattened everybody else. I remember renting every film in the Psycho franchise from them. Meijer had a pretty decent selection for a while, too. That’s where I first rented The Terminator (1984) and Liquid Sky (1982). My mom took me to the Curtis Mathes a couple of times. My folks let me get Jason and the Argonauts (1963) from the Silver Screen downtown on my 11th birthday, for instance, and I first saw Krush Groove (1985) thanks to the Video Den across from the local ice-cream parlor.

There was a time when the sun did not set on the VHS empire.Įven in a smallish town like the one where I grew up in the 1980s - Flushing, MI, population hovering around 8,000 - there were a few stores that rented VHS tapes.

Two Thousand Maniacs! by Herschell Gordon Lewis