Das Serum des Grauens

Well, this is a bad movie but it's pretty fun to watch. A sex maniac professor makes a serum that enables him to be invisible. From this you should be able to know the rest of the story. There are girls chasing, screaming girls, beaten up boyfriends, and high school naughtiness. It's fun.

This movie reminds me of The Toxic Avenger and Doom Asylum! It's a hilarious horror comedy that's not meant to be taken hilariously. If you appreciate good bad movies then this is the movie for you!

Reworking the invisible man idea originally from H.G. Wells's book for a sexploitation horror flick is rather oddly effective. Seeing while not being seen plays well into cinematic voyeurism, as the Invisible Man here joins us, the spectator, in ogling naked women (although, they're playing high-school teenagers) before the killing spree rooted in the psychosexual handbook taken straight out of "Psycho" (1960). You know, mommy issues. Multiple scenes of the girls locker room in this one. Apparently, after every pathetic suggestion of a cheerleading practice, they need to shower. Even though the film takes place during summer school, so I don't know why they're practicing--did they flunk that, too, along with physics and so need to retake it? I don't know; maybe this district doesn't work the same way I thought the rest of the American school system did.

Regardless, "The Invisible Maniac" has just about everything one could hope for from a so-bad-it's-good film. Besides the ridiculous gore and gratuitous nudity, the scenes of Kevin Dornwinkle attacking people tend to be choreographed poorly--obviously pulled punches, conspicuous cuts and such. Noel Peters as Dornwinkle plays raving lunatic believably, and he has a strange way of delivering his lines. Women and teenage girls are objectified, while the men and boys are treated as sexual predators (although, a female principle treads both lines). The invisibility serum also works well here as an allegory for drug addiction. You can't ask for much better than this before you're requesting a movie that's actually good.

Released in 1990 apparently straight to video, this film is described as a comedy or even a slasher horror type. Hard to be taken serious given the premise and subpar acting.

The lead character of the teacher/scientist (Invisible maniac) over acts especially with his fake evil laugh. The acting by the students are noticeably bad as most of them weren't exactly veteran actors by that point.

There is very little humor or clever witty jokes. The comedy comes from seeing the teacher spying on the students or some of the awkward interactions and overly sexual acts by the women (students and the one teacher). As noted this film contains a lot of skin throughout as a way to purposefully distract audiences into further enjoying the film. The writing is weak, the directing isn't great but its cheesy and silly tone with its gratuitous nudity makes the film worthwhile enough.

Second half of the film includes more of a slasher element where we see kills by the teacher taking down each student one by one. Some kills were clever and intriguing, although cheesy. The film never fully gets too horror but contains some elements. Overall not a great film but enjoyable for it's purpose.

Take one look at the cover of this movie, and you know right away that you are not about to watch a landmark film. This is cheese filmmaking in every respect, but it does have its moments. Despite the look of utter trash that the movie gives, the story is actually interesting at some points, although it is undeniably pulled along mainly by the cheerleading squads' shower scenes and sex scenes with numerous personality-free boyfriends. The acting is awful and the director did little more than point and shoot, which is why the extensive amount of nudity was needed to keep the audience's attention.

In The Nutty Professor, a hopelessly geeky professor discovers a potion that can turn him into a cool and stylish womanizer, whereas in The Invisible Maniac, a mentally damaged professor discovers a potion that can make him invisible, allowing him to spy on (and kill, for some reason) his students. Boring fodder. Don't expect any kind of mental stimulation from this, and prepare yourself for shrill and enormously overdone maniacal laughter which gets real annoying real quick...