Maniac

All right, I admit that "Reefer Madness" had continuity one could follow; but after you lose interest in 'counter-culture' naughtiness, that movie does get a little dull quite often.

The thing I like about "Maniac" is that it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Although narrative bits and pieces are borrowed from mainstream horror films of that era, and of course from the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, they're never actually woven together in any coherent manner. Nor is there any relationship established between these and the recurrent dictionary definitions of various psychoses that appear on title cards with syrupy strings playing in the background.

And of course none of it's believable in anyway - especially the make-up when the killer 'disguises' himself as the mad scientist.

However, I will say that the pacing here is swift, the dialog hilarious, the acting overwrought to the point of pure self-parody, and, after all, folks - it's only 51 minutes.

And it only cost me $2 - one just has to do one's shopping more carefully.

I am somewhat embarrassed to say this, but _Maniac_ is simply not that bad of a film. The acting is hammy, but its ineptitude doesn't even approach the Ed Wood level. This is an exploitation film, pure and simple. It was created to show insanity and scantily clad women when such things were prohibited from the mainstream. It is actually quite entertaining, especially when compared to other 1930s B-movies. The plot is certainly loopy, but not beyond following.

_Maniac_ is not a "good" film, but I would not put it anywhere near the running for worst movie of all time. That honor should be reserved for complete disasters like _Manos, The Hands of Fate_, _Robot Monster_ (which is probably the ultimate "so bad it's good" film), _Glen or Glenda_, _Big Jim McLain_, _Ninja Wars_, _The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant_, or _Dracula vs. Frankenstein_. These films were trying to be snappy entertainment and came out horribly wrong. _Maniac_ was trying to be exactly what it is.

I'd venture to guess that HBO could come up with a decent series about gypsy movie producers skirting the Hays Office of the 1930's... guys like Dwain Esper running all over Depression-Era America showing T&A "sex education" flicks in fraternal lodges and burlesque houses... it's just too bad that the movies they made stink (maybe that's their appeal). MANIAC is patently awful... Framed within chapters straight out of a pre-war DSM manual, MANIAC has so much to mention, all of it bad. Bill Woods is deserves particular notice for his relentless over- errh, I hate to call it 'acting' but in the Land of Hams, he would be King of Pork. Rivaling Woods is the uniquely bad Horace B. Carpenter. Everything in MANIAC screams for something better. Actresses appear and vanish (and in one case change altogether) for no discernible reason (although I suspect one probably balked at being topless). There's a couple of gratuitous topless shots--- one of which makes absolutely no sense and Esper has spliced in some (probably, no undoubtedly better) silent movie into the scene where Maxwell goes nutzoid at the end. THE INTERESTING THING: The "cinematographer" William C. Thompson deserves special notice: his work REALLY sucks. Camera movements are terrible, the lighting is horrible and there's a jerky feeling in every scene (lots of shots of cats and rats)... but wait! Thompson would later go on to become ED WOOD'S cinematographer (look... goosebumps!) and would obviously never truly get any real grip on his craft. I suspect Thompson was played by the ubiquitous Norman Alden in Tim Burton's homage to the antithesis of cinematic greatness, 1994's ED WOOD (4-stars!), but his character is unnamed. MANIAC has historic interest as a footnote showing how stupid an independent producer/director could get with a camera and what looks like a $400 budget. Rumor has it that Esper was a prosperous slumlord who obtained an abandoned movie camera and editing equipment from a tenant. Esper must've turned a buck on these things because he was able to keep grinding them out... but Maniac makes the worst drivel spewed out by Educational Films and PRC look like art. NO STARS!

This film is, in one word, DEMENTED! No matter how you try to look at it – either an early underdeveloped educative docu or an ambitious exploitation pioneer, you can only come to the conclusion that this is a masterpiece of awfulness! How else would you describe a movie that features images of fighting women in a basement (with baseball bats!) or a dude munching a cat's eye (which, by the way, has just been squished out)? The whole point of "Maniac" is giving some sort of anthology about all the possible mental illnesses through the adventures of a science assistant. Maxwell helps his employer with stealing bodies from the morgue and re-animating the dead tissue for the cause of science. When his boss (Dr. Meirschultz) becomes a little too obsessed, Maxwell kills him and replaces him in performing the art of mad science. In order to give the story an Edgar Allen Poe twist, he walls up the corpse and a black cat accidentally gets buried along. "Maniac" is one giant incoherent mess! Amateurish pacing, ridiculous dialogue and downright atrocious acting make it almost impossible to sit through this film even though it only lasts only a good 50 minutes. Bill Woods and Horace B. Carpenter overact terribly and especially their diabolical laughter is pathetic. And yet…I had a great time watching it and I have a great deal of respect for director Dwain Esper's risky and ahead-of-their-time ideas. Being a massive fan of eccentric exploitation and bizarre cult-films, I'm convinced that could have enjoyed a much more positive reputation by now if it only had been made in the period of sleaze-deities like Jess Franco or Jean Rollin. The editing of silent German expressionism highlights into the film is quite eerie definitely well attempted. Maniac also contains a lot of gore and even nudity, which is quite spectacular for a 1934 film. So, if you're not too easily disgusted (either by kitsch or awfulness) I recommend tracking this deranged early horror film down! I sincerely hope everyone involved in this production ended up in a mental asylum and lived happily ever after.

This film has no cohesive story, go figure it's an exploitation film, and as a true exploitation film it provides an abundance of spectacle. Maniac is about a......well a maniac. Throughout the film intertitles appear that define aberrant mental states (dementia, praecox, paranoia, etc..). Spectacle is furnished scenes such as a man popping a cats eye out of it's head and eating it, two women lounge about in their underwear, two women fighting with syringes!! Finally the last two scenes are nudie strip scenes, and are inserted for titillation sake only! Suicide recovery, cat chasing mouses, mad scientists, and a guy ranting "rats eat raw meat--you know, cat carcasses...so the rats eat the cats, the cats eat the rats, and I get the skins", are all part of this disjointed viewing experience everyone should see!!