The Oily Maniac

THE OILY MANIAC Stars Danny Lee as Shen Yuan, who is given a mystical secret that can cure him of his polio. It also makes him invulnerable as long as he does good deeds. Following instructions, Shen turns into the shrieking petroleum product of the title, and begins wiping out bad guys right away.

All goes well until Shen uses his powers out of anger, causing him to go totally berserk! The scene where he deals with his corrupt boss is quite memorable indeed! The finale is a feast of fiery fluidity.

As Shaw Brothers films go, this is a good one. It's funny, exhilarating, and absolutely nuts! Sort of like a hybrid of SWAMP THING and THE TOXIC AVENGER (predating both of these films by a few years). The copious amount of female toplessness adds immensely to the absurdity of the whole affair!

You will not forget the Maniac's scream if you live to be a thousand!...

After casting a magic spell and covering himself from head to foot in oil, cripple Shen Yuan (Danny Lee) transforms into an oozing monster to seek revenge on those who have wronged his family.

I'd been sitting on director Meng Hua Ho's The Oily Maniac for quite some time, waiting for the right moment for some seriously silly and ridiculously outrageous Shaw Brothers exploitation. I think I got my expectations up a little too high. While the film does deliver a memorably daft 'man in a rubber suit' monster, AND plenty of gratuitous female nudity (nearly all of the women get their jubblies out), it fails to completely live up to its wonderfully wacky premise and promising title, the creature not nearly maniacal enough. Where I had hoped that the man turned walking oil slick would kill countless bad guys in an OTT gory fashion, he merely swats most of his adversaries to the ground. Only one victim goes out in style, his head crushed by the oily maniac, but it's all too brief.

While I can't be too harsh when rating a film that gets the lovely Ping Chen (as Shen Yuan's love interest, Little Yue) to strip off more than once, or that features so many loud shirts (every bad guy wears one), I can only bring myself to rate this cheeze-fest a middling 5/10. The Mighty Peking Man, which also stars Danny Lee, is a much more satisfying slice of Asian trash from the same director.

Shaw Brothers movies aren't really known for being chill, but The Oily Maniac was particularly lacking in it. It's very silly, which is good, but it's also one that goes a bit far with the sleaze and assaults against women. I get that you get some of that in movies of this kind, but it's a short movie and there were at least three scenes featuring the latter, and at that point, it makes me start wanting to ask uncomfortable questions about the director's motivation for making this film.

Still, when you get the Oily Maniac doing his thing, it's goofy, funny, and probably will prove memorable. His appearance and the sounds he makes always proved amusing. He can turn into oil, or he can be a hulking humanoid covered in oil. He also has to immerse himself in oil to use these powers, which leads to some funny stuff. At its best, it feels like a goofy and more hardcore update to the sorts of tragic anti-hero monsters found in the old Universal Horror movies of the 1930s and '40s... kind of.

So the film follows him as he uses his powers to get back at people who've wronged him while also being something of a vigilante. It's basic, stupid, perverted (not the good kind of perverted, and probably too frequently perverted, too), but if you think you're the kind of person who'd enjoy a Shaw Brothers movie called The Oily Maniac, then you will enjoy the Shaw Brothers' The Oily Maniac.

Nowadays you are a monster if you spill old-fashioned polluting fossil fuels, or even promote their use, but in 1976 it was a wonderful product that made you a superhero! By obtaining an ancient Malaysian formula, the pathetic, crippled, and insignificant lawyer assistant Shen Yuan discovers that he can turn into a powerful warrior as soon as he comes into contact with oil or an oil product. Sure, he may look like a walking pile of petrified feces, but he's super strong, can jump incredibly high, and even liquefy himself to move faster. Which member of The Avengers can do that; I ask you?

To be honest, I'm not too familiar with the work of the infamous Shaw Brothers, and I expected "The Oily Maniac" to be different. The fighting/martial arts sequences are well-choreographed, like I assumed, but was hoping for trashier & smuttier B-horror instead of all the nudity and rape scenes. Every girl in the cast is forced to go topless, and many of them don't look too comfortable. There also isn't much of a plot. Shen Yuan transforms whenever he witnesses injustice, kills a few bad people, and carries on. The police are quite useless, as they literally state: we suspect everyone except for the cripple guy. There are a few pulpy highlights, like when the superhero-creature beats someone to death with his own bicycle, but the film certainly isn't a must-see.

This would probably amuse a young adolescent male, what with the rampaging oil covered monster interrupting fairly explicit sexual goings and other non consensual abuses. Just about of interest too as an example of the myths and legends out of Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, where some of this is filmed. For the general viewer, this is problematic, not due to any lack of cinematic skills, the Shaw brothers tend to know their audience and be able to cater for it but their is a distinct lack of focus. The oily maniac is pretty well done as far as the effects department go and whether it is the life size monster or the mere puddle that can slide under doors all is fairly satisfactory (especially helped by Jaws like rip off music to accompany each rampage) but there is no consistency as to his actions and those around him. Whilst all the girls who have their tops torn off are lovely the support acting is generally poor and with so much running about without anyone (us included) knowing why, those eyelids begin to drop. Fun in places and fantastic having a 1976 Hong Kong exploitation movie look so good but here even 84 minutes seems a long time.