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The Worst Film Ever

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Maniac is one of the lesser known of Hammer's "psychological thrillers" made in black and white around the 1960's. It's not fiendishly clever enough to be really memorable but it does have a few interesting twists. Basically the plot sees Kerwin Mathews stranded in a small French town where he books into a hotel and starts to feel attracted to the owners sexy young step-daughter. Soon after this, he also starts feeling attracted to the more mature but still sexy step-mother as well! Apart form this love triangle, there is a further problem, in that the missing family member in this scenario is the father, who is currently locked up in an asylum for a violent blow-torch murder committed years ago…now but he wants out, and our hero is about to be roped into aiding in his escape! The film doesn't hang together very well for the beginning hour or so, sadly mainly due to Kerwin Mathews' wooden performance. Seeing him flirt with the daughter and then casually drop her and turn to her mother left me feeling quite disconnected from the plot as I found him a very unlikeable character. However when the plot to spring the insane killer gets going, things get to be more fun, and its after this point that a few nice twists start being revealed. I didn't guess the ending, which I am glad to say.The movie is nicely shot, and makes a lot of use of it's location, with some very nice location filming, especially a very odd ruin/cave which features in the finale. Although why it's set in France at all is of no consequence, they really could have used the exact same plot and just stayed put in England. Anyway it's nice to see these old movies again, and luckily this is out on DVD. It's worth a look.

I enjoyed the first part of this thriller produced by Hammer. Kerwin Matthews is very appealing as the leading man and the first half of the movie I wasn't sure where it was going, who to trust and who was deceiving who. But the twist at the end made the actions of some of the characters in the first half of the movie illogical. When a films gives you a twist at the end, I like to be able to look back and say, oh wow, now I see it. "Ten Little Indians", 1965, and "The Sixth Sense" ,1999, both are good examples of surprise endings that make sense when you look back. This one doesn't. "Spoiler" When Eve's real motivations are revealed at the end and we find out who Georges really is, the whole first part of the film unravels and Eve and "Georges" behavior is inexplicable. " Spoiler" I would recommend this to other fans of 60's English Cinema with the caveat that it is worth watching for the actors, and the scenery (even in black and white) but the plot has lots of holes.

This was one of two Hammer thrillers (even if it was watched on a "Fantasy" day) that had eluded me thus far; for the record, the remaining title – CRESCENDO (1970) – has, controversially, just been released on DVD-R as part of Warners' U.S. exclusive "Archive Collection". While MANIAC has a reasonable reputation, I have to say that I was ultimately let down by it and I would place the film in the lower rank of the studio's efforts in this vein. Its main fault, basically, lies in a not very interesting plot (courtesy, as were many of these outings, of screenwriter Jimmy Sangster): besides, it tries – but fails – to recapture the sense of eeriness inherent in a remote seaside location (in its case, the Camargues) already seen in the much superior TASTE OF FEAR (1961) and THE DAMNED (shot in 1961 but only released 2 years later). That said, characterization is quite well rounded: Kerwin Mathews, infrequently seen in a modern-day setting, makes for a surprisingly effective lead (in fact, he had previously starred in Hammer's splendid adventure film THE PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER [1962]); Nadia Gray is sultry and conniving, Liliane Brousse her ingenue – but no less sexy – stepdaughter (who gets raped in the film's very opening sequence!). Coming into play during the latter stages is Donald Houston as the titular figure, though he proves to be someone other than who the audience had been led to believe; therefore, we have a number of nice twists (and implied violence) here…but, then, end up with a rather ordinary mystery – actually anticipating a number of gialli in this regard! Unfortunately, my enjoyment of the film was further dampened by all kind of technical problems (after the picture in the copy I acquired initially failed to visualize) – with stretched image (fixed by altering the TV setting to 16:9), fuzziness, combing (the latter also causing the audio to drop out a couple of times) and lip-synch issues all rearing their ugly head throughout the viewing!

The film begins with a very sick and brutal murder with a blow torch!! While you could understand why the man killed, how he did it was naturally quite unsettling! Four years later, Kerwin Mathews is wandering about Europe aimlessly when he arrives in a small town in Provence, France. Here he stumbles upon a beautiful pair of ladies who are mother and daughter. What happens next, I really don't want to say as it would spoil the excitement and twists.The early 1960s brought us a lot of films about maniac killers. PEEPING TOM seemed to be the film to start the craze back--debuting just before PSYCHO. PEEPING TOM was probably the best of these films and for about six years afterwords, there were a bunch of similar productions that focused on a mad killer. STRAIGHT-JACKET, HOMICIDAL, DEMENTIA 13, PARANOIAC and HUSH HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE are among scores of psychopathic killer films.In the middle of this mad killer craze came the film MANIAC. Like the others, it involves a brutal killer who was seen as hopelessly crazy and the film had lots of nice twists and turns to keep the viewer guessing. Compared to these other films, I'd say that MANIAC is about average--very engaging but not among the cream of the bloody crop. Well made--just now good enough to put it among the best of the genre.