* “Brigadoon For Crackers”
I’ve been thinking about this Herschell Gordon Lewis movie a lot with the current reawakened attention (for black folks it never went away) to the terrors represented by the Rebel flag. It’s one of my favorite rural/hillbilly horrors (ie: Deliverance, Wendigo or Let’s Scare Jessica To Death – or any movie where lost city folks run up against their scary country brethren) as well as gory Civil Rights/race horror –if that is indeed a horror category—and in fact, I first saw 2K in the fantastic programming for A Time for Burning: Cinema of the Civil Rights Movement at Brooklyn Academy of Music.
From the program notes:
At the height of national tension over the civil rights movement, the godfather of gore released a movie of questionable taste and strong conviction that exposed the growing hostility between North and South like a raw nerve. A Confederate brigadoon emerges 100 years after being massacred by Union and gears up to torture and kill any Yankees that happen to ride through town.
What’s particularly effective in the film, for once, is the absence of black characters. So, no violence to or abjection of black bodies is seen on screen and white people, “Yankees” are the sole victims of other white people. Unlike many fictional civil rights era-set films (like the TRULY TERRIFYING The Help, say)
"You is SCARY"
there are no white saviors or fellow travelers or allies.
And, as you know, traditionally horror scenarios the black man is always the first one to go. So, Two Thousand Maniacs is kinda refreshing!
Two Thousand Maniacs Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis (1964) With William Kerwin, Connie Mason, Jeffrey Allen, Ben Moore, Gary Bakeman
And what about the theme song which I cannot get out of my head:“Yeee HAW! The south is gonna rise AGIN!”
And as we see from current events, agin and agin and agin if we don’t #staywoke.
(More about flags in a few days-- I'll post my installation project;UNION.)
*(I can’t take full credit for that bon mot though the horror/musical correspondences are of particular interest to me)