"This centennial is a centennial of blood vengeance!"

Something a lot of people don't realize about me is that I'm into flags.

I love flags. I love to see them flapping in the wind. I love them at full-mast, half-mast, upside down. I even love them when they're on fire.

As an enthusiast of flags, and frankly, anything anyone feels compelled to say a little prayer to that isn't God, I've come to understand that not everyone likes every flag. Sure, most people have a flag they prefer over all the others, but some flags even cause anger and hurt feelings. Then the people who like those flags get angry and have hurt feelings at the people who don't like their flag. People die for flags. More importantly, people kill for flags.

When a piece of fabric is imbued with so much power, I'm a big fan. That's why this week's Thursday Thriller is Two Thousand Maniacs.

This 1964 film by auteur Herschell Gordon Lewis is not his goriest film, but IMDb says it's his personal favorite. Plus, it's got the Confederate Stars and Bars everywhere. 

The story is about two carloads of tourists who get misdirected from the highway to Florida and find themselves in a backwater Georgia town called Pleasant Valley. The year is 1965 and Pleasant Valley is celebrating its centennial, at which the lost northerners are to be the guests of honor, by which I mean ritual murder victims.

See, the yokels of Pleasant Valley are still sour about losing the Civil War, so every 100 years they convene and kill off a few yankees in the most festive of ways. 

The acting is stiff, the gore effects corny and the pacing slow, but there's something about this movie I like, and it's not just the flags. For all its flaws there's something clever about it, like when the bluegrass pickers are singing Flatt and Scruggs's "Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms" as a severed arm turns on a spit over an open fire. It's a pun, and a bad one, and I smiled.

Two Thousand Maniacs stars Playboy's Miss June 1963 Connie Mason and streams on Shudder and YouTube.

PS -- Have you ever wanted to terrorize people for money? Do you live in the Louisville area? Do you have some free time come this fall? I'm looking for a few good monsters to help me collect souls down at The Devil's Attic. Send an e-mail to thedevilsattic@hotmail.com to find out if you've got what it takes to join the best haunted house cast in town. Live the nightmare, and make sure and tell 'em Old Scratch sent ya.