Richard Chatten Although copyrighted in September 1934, 'Maniac' feels as if it were made five years earlier, both technically and in its extraordinary subject matter; the latter because it was never intended to be exhibited by any of the major theatre chains and thus beyond the reach of the newly enforced Production Code. To watch 'Maniac' is as if the Production Code had never happened, as it abounds with such brazen flouting of the Code as four young cuties sitting about in their scanties discussing current stories in the press in surprisingly highfalutin language, a couple of fleeting glimpses of bare breasts, eyewatering and jawdropping violence such as a scene involving cruelty to a cat lifted (along with much of the rest of the plot) from Poe's 'The Black Cat' and a remarkably energetic, hair-pulling, clothes-ripping catfight in a cellar between Thea Ramsey & Phyllis Diller that escalates from hypodermics to a baseball bat. Crudely made but with a nodding acquaintance with rudimentary cinematic technique, this film is obviously cheap but far from inept. The veteran editor William Austin makes competent use of cutting and dissolves (as well as footage apparently lifted from 'Maciste all'Inferno'), the laboratory scenes are actually quite good-looking and reasonably competently framed and lit by cameraman William Thompson (who also shot 'Plan 9 from Outer Space'!), there's a satisfactory amount of outdoor photography (although the night scenes are far too dark), including exterior shots of the back yard of a Hollywood bungalow, and the climax looks as if it's shot in a real cellar.The script is by the director's wife Hildegarde Stadie, and she plainly knows her Poe, who is actually name checked at one point. Some of her dialogue is also quite a salty commentary on modern life, like the exchange between the two embalmers: "between the gangsters and the auto drivers, we won't need another war to carry off the population. You didn't even mention the suicides". A lot of the humour is plainly blackly intentional, like the neighbour discussing breeding cats for their furs while feeding them on (and to) rats. One narrative device that heightens the film's rather archaic Pre-Code feel is its use of intertitles which periodically interrupt the plot to describe various abnormal mental conditions (all of which sound applicable to the present incumbent of the White House). Plainly fig leaves to maintain the pretence that the film has a Serious Educational Purpose (and accompanied by the only music in the film, apart from the final movement of Tchaikovsky's Sixth over the opening credits), normally this medical stuff would have been delivered at some point by an actor pretending to be a doctor, but here it's done with passages cribbed from medical publications. One of these conditions, Dementia Praecox, was a quarter of a century later the condition Elizbeth Taylor was diagnosed with in 'Suddenly Last Summer' and compared by Katherine Hepburn to an exotic bloom ("Night-blooming Dementia Praecox") in a purple passage that wouldn't have been out of place here.

dougdoepke The movie must have done something right to get 70 reviews. What it did right was to get everything wrong in terms of filmmaking craft. In short, the results are hilariously bad. There's more ham in the acting than at Farmer John's; the editing must have been done in a darkroom; the script pasted together in that same darkroom; while Esper likely laughed all the way to the proverbial bank. Yes, this is exploitation movie-making from the 30's, replete with snatches of nude girls and textbook psychology thrown in, the latter no doubt cover for the former. Good thing I covered my cat's eyes while we were watching. Likely, Esper's on PETA's all-time list of cat-throwing villains. Yes indeed, movie-making doesn't come more mangled than this. Unless, of course, it's one of those A-list snoozers that Liz and Richard used to make. Meanwhile, I'm hoping to find Maniac's sequel, maybe something like "Maniac Goes to Congress". It's probably buried in the Golden Turkey archives awaiting re-discovery.(In passing—the movie's Phyllis Diller, b.1897, is not the same person as the comedienne Phyllis Diller, b.1917.)

Bezenby Oh, man! This one was so daft I had to watch it twice. It's like the Great Grandad of bad movies, sitting way out there pre-World War 2, being all disjointed and hilarious. What you have here is a monumentally stupid film which is supremely entertaining for every second of it's fifty minute running time. Maxwell is an actor, but he's not very good, which is why he's actually working as a lab assistant to a mad scientist who is intent on bringing the dead back to life and performing illegal transplants. The mad scientist is all about shouting and laughing and screaming and blackmailing Maxwell to dress up as the coroner, or sneak into an undertakers to steal bodies (a truly weird scene, as we get to see cats fighting each other, and dogs fighting cats…who knows why). Eventually the scientist goes completely nuts and gives Maxwell a gun, telling him he's got to shoot himself so that the scientist can bring him back to life. Quite sensibly Maxwell shoots the guy instead, but rather insanely then decides to become the scientist, mimicking his hair and stealing his glasses (although the professor magically grows another pair on his face later). In a scene that truly must be watched for full effect, some lady brings her husband to Maxwell to have him treated for depression. Maxwell injects him with something that turns the guy mental. After screaming "Burning! Burning in my veins" in one of the funniest acting jags I've ever witnessed, this guy grabs a resurrected woman and runs off with her into the country (where she changes into another woman and we get to see some thirties boobs! Who'd have thought it). His wife is cool with this though (really!) as long as the scientist can do what he was planning to do the dead body the lady finds on the floor (she's cool with that too!). After that, the film just gets weirder…Maxwell goes mental at a cat (who can be seen being thrown into the room by some runner), pokes its eye out (obviously a different cat with one eye), then eats the eyeball. There's a bad actor who has a house full of cats (he keeps the skins after they're eaten by rats…or something) who randomly turns up. At one point Maxwell is fondling a lady for no reason at all. We cut to Maxwell's wife and her scantily clad friends (one with a voice as high a chipmunk) and Maxwell plans to have his wife and the wife of the crazy guy kill each other (because of the 'gleam in their eye'). Then he stands around while crazy imagery from another film (where people look like the devil and breathe fire) is superimposed on top of him. Randomly there are dialogue cards detailing various mental illnesses with music that cuts off abruptly. The moment this film ended I wanted to watch it again. No one can act, hardly anything makes sense, and it's all so entertaining I think it might be one of my favourite bad films. If indeed you can label an entertaining film 'bad'.

Boba_Fett1138 When you think of exploitation movies you normally think of the '70's. However as it turns out exploitation flicks have been around a lot longer. This movie features some violence and nudity and would had never got distributed because of that through the normal channels.Director Dwain Esper always distributed his own movies by renting out a cinema so he could play his movies. He advertised his movies by mostly putting up poster with some X's put over it, implying that it were movies for adults only. I don't think he ever got very rich from his movies, though obviously his movies also weren't exactly expensive ones to make.To be honest, the concept of the whole movie didn't seemed that horrible and it also didn't started off that bad. It certainly was comparable with most other genre movies from the same period but let me tell you that things get worse pretty rapidly.It's basically a really amateur like made movie. It's not only horrible cheap looking, it's also really bad written and acted. But lots of blame for this movie also of course really needs to go to director Dwain Esper. It seemed like he at times was just doing something without knowing how it would turn out for the movie. It's funny how in one scene they couldn't even get the camera focus right, when the character that is talking is all blurry since the focus is on something that is in the foreground and they simply did not bother to fix this at all when they must have find this out.I can understand and see what the movie was trying to do with it's story and to be frank, the movie seemed to have some good ideas but it's all being handled extremely poorly. I just couldn't understand and follow this movie at times because it often becomes such an incredible mess. Often the movie simply makes no sense at all.The movie is mostly still 'enjoyable' to watch because of its extremely bad acting. All of the actors go extremely over-the-top and some of them never had any experiences with acting, obviously.Nevertheless, really one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Luckily it's only about 50 minutes short.2/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/