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Maniac
An ex-vaudeville actor is working as the assistant to a doctor who has Frankenstein aspirations. The ex-vaudeville actor kills the doctor and decides to assume the identity of the dead physician.
Release : | 1934 |
Rating : | 3.7 |
Studio : | Road Show Attractions, |
Crew : | Props, Director of Photography, |
Cast : | Horace B. Carpenter |
Genre : | Horror |
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I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Just what I expected
The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Upon second viewing, Dwain Esper's 'Maniac' had the offbeat charm of an amusing Ed Wood movie. Esper must be credited with offering up what in its time may have been the worst movie ever made.On the plus side, the nudity contained in the movie is surreal and enchanting in its leering way. Scenes are very brief and fairly provocative. Frankly, I needed these scenes to wake me up. Wood's 'Orgy of the Dead', by contrast, becomes a ninety minute 'borefest' of titty dancers; it is presented in such an insipid way. For sheer bizarro value, I have frankly never seen a cat's eye gouged out, and then eaten by the sadist, who likens the eye to a 'grape'. (We've long ago ALMOST forgotten Divine eating poodle poop in 'Pink Flamingos'.) And I must admit, Bill Woods is not bad in the demented lead. In fact, this film could have made a decent horror movie had not the story stopped frequently to strains of sappy music as the screen displayed psychobabble supposedly describing the story in 'clinical' terms. These interruptions are comical and annoying at the same time. And Horace Carpenter would have fit beautifully into the strange Ed Wood entourage. It was hilarious as Carpenter accuses Woods' character of being a 'ham'...as Horace chews the scenery like a ravenous screen glutton! (Carpenter may have thought he was in a silent film for all I know!)This is a bad film, and I refuse to read any deep artistic value into what was done here. It lacks the sophisticated humor of 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'. And Bill Woods is no Tor Johnson. If you feel compelled to watch this oddity (maybe you loath cats), try to remember this cinema will never be confused with 'Citizen Kane'.
This is one of those cheapie "horror" movies that can be good for a few laughs, but nothing more. It's another Frankenstein-esque plot, with stereotypical mad scientist Dr. Meirschultz (Horace B. Carpenter) claiming to be able to revive recently dead folks with a mere injection. Yes, no more of waiting for a huge thunderstorm to get enough electricity to jolt a corpse! Just one hypo is all you need.The good doctor is assisted by a former vaudevillian named Don Maxwell (William Woods) who does impressions. Not of famous people, mind you, but of people like the guards at a mortuary – the better for the duo to sneak in an snag themselves a body. They grab an alluring young woman who just committed suicide and revive her, but the woman spends most of the rest of the movie offscreen, for some reason.Maxwell, who's also on the lam from the cops, decides to impersonate the doctor and take over the experiments, at which point wacky hijinks ensue. At least I assume they did, given the poor lighting and unintelligible voices.Interestingly enough, there's brief nudity. This would be before the infamous Hays Code that prohibited just about everything – at least until the sixties or so.Maniac, also known as Sex Maniac, isn't worth your time. Also, if spot the name "Phyllis Diller" in the cast, rest assured that it's not that Phyllis Diller.
No amount of solemn narrative justification in the captions can disguise this film's exploitation roots, and the film is so eager to get to the "good parts" that it loses coherence about 10 minutes in and never gets it back, but in spite of this (or even because of it), "Maniac" is a fair amount of fun to watch. "Maniac" is distinctly lacking in polish or professionalism (there's at least one major thread that just wanders off and is completely unresolved (a man the doctor injects with "superadrenaline" carries off and murders the cataleptic revived zombie woman also wandering the premises, and we never see him again)(trust me, in spite of the flash of nipple it isn't nearly as exciting as it sounds), but you can tell it's also funny when it means to be funny -it just doesn't have the soundtrack to "tell us" when something funny is going on. The movie does try to take a hack at being a "comedy of errors" and the payoff at the end is both welcome and deserved. Worth watching just to see how they did exploitation films back in the day and on its on terms as a piece of over-the-top silliness.
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/