User reviews

This film has no cohesive story, go figure it's an exploitation film, and as a true exploitation film it provides an abundance of spectacle. Maniac is about a......well a maniac. Throughout the film intertitles appear that define aberrant mental states (dementia, praecox, paranoia, etc..). Spectacle is furnished scenes such as a man popping a cats eye out of it's head and eating it, two women lounge about in their underwear, two women fighting with syringes!! Finally the last two scenes are nudie strip scenes, and are inserted for titillation sake only! Suicide recovery, cat chasing mouses, mad scientists, and a guy ranting "rats eat raw meat--you know, cat carcasses...so the rats eat the cats, the cats eat the rats, and I get the skins", are all part of this disjointed viewing experience everyone should see!!

******SPOILER****** At first sight "Maniac" seems to be some kind of educational film about the causes and effects of mental illness with a forward to the movie about the mind and how it works and effects us in our everyday way of life. But as soon as you see Dr. Meirschultz, Horace Carpenter, and his assistant Maxwell, Bill Woods, and how insane they act in Dr. Meirschultz's laboratory you start to realize that your in for a long and bumpy ride on the Loony Express.

"Maniac" would have been effective just as an unintentional comedy if there was a sense of continuity to the story. Where you can at least follow and understand just whats happening no matter how nutty the story is; but there are at least two giant gaps in it.

The first plot-hole has to do with Maxwell, a failed actor, whom Dr. Meirschultz seems to have something on him in regard to his being on the lamb from the police.Yet the movie never bothers to explains why? Is being a "ham actor" a crime? In another confusing scene in the movie Buckley, Ted Edwards, kidnaps the zombie-like Maria El'tura whom Dr. Meirschultz had brought back to life and takes off in the woods with her were we last see both of them.

Mrs. Buckley, Phillis Diller?, not that one but another Phillis Diller, tells Dr. Meirschultz that she would help him with his plans if he, after he kills her husband Buckely, puts a new brain in Buclely's skull that will make him totally obedient to her. Yet we never see Buckely again in the movie even though Mrs. Buckley is in the movie helping Maxwell until almost the end. That's where she has a ferocious cat-fight with his wife Mrs. Maxwell, Thero Ramsey! Did the budget for the film run out of money for Buckley's brain-transplant?

Dr. Meirschultz got very agitated earlier in the film when he couldn't get any human bodies for his experiment, which he felt were nearing completion, when Maxwell came back from the morgue empty-handed. Dr. Meirshultz then stupidly handed Maxwell a gun telling him to shoot himself! Dr. Meirschultz then promises Maxwell that he would reward him by bringing him back to life with a new heart that he has ready for him! In fact there was never any mention up to then or even later that Maxwell had any heart problems?

Maxwell after taking the gun instead shoots the insane Dr.Meirschultz and using makeup and wigs and a false beard took over Dr. Meirschultz's identity. Playing doctor his first patient is Buckley who's wife tell Maxwell that he's very tense and needs a sedative to settle him down.

Trying to inject Buckley with a syringe of harmless water Maxwell mistakenly injects him with super-adrenaline. This has Buckley go into a crazed and insane fit where he grabs the just revived from the dead Maria and they both check out never to be seen again in the movie.

Meanwhile Maxwell who at first tried to kill Dr. Meirschultz's black cat Satan who immediately check out of the laboratory. It turned out that Satan ate the heart that Maxwell wanted to use for his own experiments with dead bodies and continue what Meirschultz started. Later Maxwell sealed Dr. Meirschultz body into the wall of his basement with bricks, not knowing that Satan snuck inside the wall too, to keep up his charade of being the great Dr.Meirschultz. It's after they raided the place that the police found Meirschultz's body when they entered the basement and heard Satan meowing. At the end of the film we see Maxwell behind bars raving mad and obviously insane bragging about how he fooled the world with his brilliant impersonation of Dr. Meirschultz.

P.S Due Hollywood's failed attempt to explain the reasons and causes of mental illness to the movie-going public "Maniac" lost out to "It Happened One Night" for best film of the year in 1934.

If you have never seen a Dwain Esper film you might feel nervous sitting in a room with people who have seen and enjoy them. Curiously there is no middle ground for Dwain Esper, you either love his films or you hate them. He was no filmmaker; originally he was a real estate agent and one of his clients defaulted on a mortgage and left a house full of filmmaking equipment. Esper was wondering what to do with all the stuff and suddenly the movie making bug bit him and that was that; he had a new career. Dwain was no Edward D. Wood. Eddie's films have a laughable ineptness but the sincerity was there despite the shortcomings, and they were legion. He wasn't even comparable with Andy Milligan whose filmic efforts make Ed Wood look like John Ford by comparrison. If I HAVE to compare Dwain with someone it could only be David Friedman. Both went directly for the cinematic equivalent of a heart punch and gave us images so unrelentingly gritty and brutal they dared us to keep looking. Having seen most of Dwain's movies I have to say MANIAC is his magnum opus. Horace Carpenter, a former director of silent westerns (check out FLASHING STEEDS sometime) and member of Cecil B. DeMille's stock company (ROMANCE OF THE REDWOODS, JOAN THE WOMAN, etc) plays Dr. Mierschultz, the maddest doctor to step in front of a camera. Bill Woods is his assistant, the dangerously neurotic Maxwell who is on the run from the police (we never find out why but Dwain was not one to clutter up his screenplays with needless facts). Neither of these characters is playing with a full deck. Meirschultz restores life to a dead woman and wants to restore someone else by transplanting a living heart into a dead body. When he demands that Maxwell shoot himself it brings an abrupt end to their employee/employer relationship and Maxwell kills him and decides to take his place ("I not only look like Mierschultz, I AM Mierschultz! I will be a great man!") And this is where the movie gets REALLY weird! The film has lately been restored and it available on both video and DVD so I don't want to spoil the surprises; and there are a lot of them in the 55 minute roller coaster ride of a movie. I will warn all cat lovers to avoid this movie. There are one or two scenes that will bother them, but there is no animal cruelty! That one eyed cat was a real one that Dwain bought from an animal shelter. Dwain always claimed he was making educational films to warn people against drugs, promiscuity, and to enlighten people about mental illness. He must have known it isn't WHAT you say but HOW you say it. So pop this cassette into your VCR. Good luck to you all. Viddy well, little brother, viddy well.

I am somewhat embarrassed to say this, but _Maniac_ is simply not that bad of a film. The acting is hammy, but its ineptitude doesn't even approach the Ed Wood level. This is an exploitation film, pure and simple. It was created to show insanity and scantily clad women when such things were prohibited from the mainstream. It is actually quite entertaining, especially when compared to other 1930s B-movies. The plot is certainly loopy, but not beyond following.

_Maniac_ is not a "good" film, but I would not put it anywhere near the running for worst movie of all time. That honor should be reserved for complete disasters like _Manos, The Hands of Fate_, _Robot Monster_ (which is probably the ultimate "so bad it's good" film), _Glen or Glenda_, _Big Jim McLain_, _Ninja Wars_, _The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant_, or _Dracula vs. Frankenstein_. These films were trying to be snappy entertainment and came out horribly wrong. _Maniac_ was trying to be exactly what it is.

In the 1980s, thanks to the Brothers Medved, "Plan 9" earned the reputation as the worst film of all time. In the 1990s, thanks to MST3K, "Manos, the Hands of Fate" earned the worst film moniker.

Allow me to submit the film "Maniac" as the very worst. This film is so wretched, so fallible, so awful, it's impossible not to have an opinion about it.

"Maniac" is a film of almost no reputation. However, cult film critic Danny Peary called it the very worst. It's easy to see why. "Maniac" has almost no frame of film that is expertly produced. The film is grainy, shots are poorly executed, actors are rendered unseeable by being filmed standing behind test tubes.

"Maniac" easily has the worst acting in any film, from any time, any country. Overacting must have been a prerequisite to being hired for this film. Everyone talks in such an imposing, declaratory style, you'd think you were watching a session of Congress. At least "Plan 9" has professional actors such as Lyle Talbot; at least "Manos" has interesting characterizations. "Maniac" cannot boast any of that, except that actor Horace Carpenter once worked at Biograph with D.W. Griffith. What a comedown for him to be in this film.

Don't get me wrong; the film is a hoot to watch. From the incredible cat's eye scene to the cat fighting to the women fighting with syringes, "Maniac" has it all.

This film, made in 1934, may surprise people with its brief nude scenes. But it was a "roadshow" movie, so it's not really surprising at all. This was the kind of movie that could only be seen in burlesque houses or tent shows. Often, a promoter would put ads about the movie in the local papers, gaining huge interest in the film. The promoter would pitch a tent on the outskirts of town for the screening of the film. The promoter all too often would have to fold the tent and get out of town quickly, trying to avoid local authorities and local moral laws.

Do yourself, do your family, do your community a favor. Rent "Maniac" and see if you don't agree it's the worst ever.

You'll howl, you'll cry, you'll kiss your rental money goodbye!

See! Incredible eye-popping scenes! See! A bevy of chorus beauties! See! Mad scientists go even madder! See! How long you can stand watching it!

In the tradition of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE and THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS, this turkey manages to earn four stars because it's so utterly, completely, bizarrely and amazingly awful. After murdering his boss, a doctor, an aspiring actor uses makeup to take his place. The rest of the movie is pretty much incomprehensible as the fake doc goes berserk. Women catfight with syringes, a topless woman is kidnapped and, most famously, our protagonist, for reasons known only to him, pops out and eagerly consumes a cat's eye.

One presumes that MANIAC, to some degree at least, was supposed to be this bad. It was released in 1934 as a "roadshow" movie, meaning perpetrators of what was then intolerable filth traveled from one town to the next with its reel, showing it in shady burlesque houses. By today's standards, it's probably not even an "R" film; other than the brief nudity, it's extremely tame. MANIAC will appeal to fans of terrible movies. In fact, this may very well be the very first "good bad" flick. It will also interest those curious to see what was deemed as immoral artistic expression all those years ago.

I had such a terrible print of this that it distracted from the enjoyment (such as it was). It is such a mis-edited hodgepodge that one never really gets into any kind of story. There are about six plots introduced and then pretty much dropped. We have the re-animated women, the nut case, high on adrenaline, The mad doctor, the specialist in disguises, the women whose patronage seems really out of place. There are virtually no motivations for anything--it just rambles on from one scene to the next. The little instructional breaks explaining various psychological anomalies lead us into--what? It's as if it's supposed to be a clinical film and then you have this ranting. The cat gets its eye popped out. There are Poe things, "The Black Cat," with the walled up person. I don't know. It just sort of ended, which was OK. The nudity was interesting, in that it must have been pre-production code. Why was it there. I suppose so the voyeuristic could be lured into a movie theater. Who knows. It's one big mess.

Maniac (AKA Sex Maniac) is technically awful, with basic direction, lousy writing and incredibly bad performances, but it is also every bit as deranged as people say it is, which makes it quite a bit of fun if weird, low-budget trash is your thing.

Bill Woods plays ex-vaudeville impersonator Don Maxwell, who is wanted by the police; he goes into hiding as assistant to Dr. Meirschultz (Horace Carpenter), who treats mental illness but who also has a side project: bringing the dead back to life. Meirschultz sends Maxwell to bring him the body of a beautiful suicide victim, who they successfully resurrect. However, when the doctor tells his assistant to shoot himself so that he can bring him back from the dead as well, Maxwell shoots the doctor instead. Maxwell then uses his handy make-up bag to impersonate the doctor, but succumbs to madness.

This plot sounds like fairly standard mad scientist fare, the kind of thing that would star Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff if it had a bigger budget, but it is the execution that makes this film special: director Dwain Esper is clearly not a talented film-maker, but he adds so much lunacy, with a big helping of exploitative material, that it's hard not to like just a little. In one scene, Maxwell (as Meirschultz) gouges out the eye of a cat and eats it; a neighbour has a wild rant about why he has so many cats ("the cats eat the rats, the rats eat the cats, and I keep the skins."); intertitles randomly explain various types of mental illness; Maxwell mistakenly injects a mental patient with super adrenaline, causing the patient to go even madder and carry off the revived suicide victim (the man gives a masterclass in bad acting) ; four girls saunter around their room in their underwear; and Maxwell hides the dead doctor's body behind a wall in the basement in a plot development inspired by Poe's The Black Cat.

Add a little gratuitous topless female nudity (rare for such a vintage movie), and what you have is not a good film but one that definitely has to be seen to be believed.

This movie is one of my guilty little pleasures. The more I watch it the more I just have to laugh. This is far from one of the worst movies ever made, but it may be one of the most pointless. The actors are the founding fathers of the Shatner-Hasselhoff school of ham. The camera work is horrid. The plot -- lets see how many gratuitous points of senselessness we can throw into one movie and still base it (vaguely) on as many Edgar Allen Poe shorts we can throw in. Who cares about continuity we can always film cats. The best part of these 50 minutes is the blatant attempts by the film maker to make this exhibitionist trash a legitimate "educational" flick. Love it or hate it everyone with an interest in psychology, z-rated movies, or just an hour to pointlessly kill should watch this at least once.

This film is, in one word, DEMENTED! No matter how you try to look at it – either an early underdeveloped educative docu or an ambitious exploitation pioneer, you can only come to the conclusion that this is a masterpiece of awfulness! How else would you describe a movie that features images of fighting women in a basement (with baseball bats!) or a dude munching a cat's eye (which, by the way, has just been squished out)? The whole point of "Maniac" is giving some sort of anthology about all the possible mental illnesses through the adventures of a science assistant. Maxwell helps his employer with stealing bodies from the morgue and re-animating the dead tissue for the cause of science. When his boss (Dr. Meirschultz) becomes a little too obsessed, Maxwell kills him and replaces him in performing the art of mad science. In order to give the story an Edgar Allen Poe twist, he walls up the corpse and a black cat accidentally gets buried along. "Maniac" is one giant incoherent mess! Amateurish pacing, ridiculous dialogue and downright atrocious acting make it almost impossible to sit through this film even though it only lasts only a good 50 minutes. Bill Woods and Horace B. Carpenter overact terribly and especially their diabolical laughter is pathetic. And yet…I had a great time watching it and I have a great deal of respect for director Dwain Esper's risky and ahead-of-their-time ideas. Being a massive fan of eccentric exploitation and bizarre cult-films, I'm convinced that could have enjoyed a much more positive reputation by now if it only had been made in the period of sleaze-deities like Jess Franco or Jean Rollin. The editing of silent German expressionism highlights into the film is quite eerie definitely well attempted. Maniac also contains a lot of gore and even nudity, which is quite spectacular for a 1934 film. So, if you're not too easily disgusted (either by kitsch or awfulness) I recommend tracking this deranged early horror film down! I sincerely hope everyone involved in this production ended up in a mental asylum and lived happily ever after.

I remember the first time I sat down to watch CITIZEN KANE many years ago. That movie had the reputation of being perhaps the greatest American film of all time, and I was sure I was going to be disappointed. I wasn't. It's a brilliant piece of film making that I've enjoyed again and again over the years, and one of the few times I remember thinking that a much-hyped film had actually exceeded its publicity. Last night I had a similar experience: I watched Dwaine Esper's classic MANIAC. We may be talking about the other end of the cinematic scale here but my reaction was similar: here was a movie I'd read about for years which not only lived up to the hype but surpassed it. MANIAC is a work of demented genius. I can't remember seeing another film that was more assuredly the product of a man unhampered by matters of good taste or conventional film making technique. It's one of the most consistently watchable and entertaining features I've seen, with an atmosphere more reminiscent of an old underground movie that a Hollywood production. The over the top acting, ludicrous but somehow clever dialogue, and nightmarish imagery (raving madmen superimposed over footage from silent horror classics, way ahead of its time gratuitous nudity, people being shot up with hypodermics the size of harpoons, and a killer catfight between two ferocious and seemingly indestructible women) all combine into a unique and surreal viewing experience. And yet the most shocking thing about this movie is the flashes of actual talent it displays (albiet sparingly). The sets and photography are occasionally quite atmospheric, and some of the dialogue, if competently delivered, would have seemed quite clever and original, foreshadowing the "postmodern" exchanges of people like Tarantino. All in all a movie that defines by example the word "unique" and an experience not to be missed.

I saw this film recently as part of a group of movies compiled and sold as horror classics. My one initial reaction was that I could not believe that a film made in 1934 allowed full frontal nudity and in several scenes. How did that happen? Did they get away with it by trying to be a docudrama of sorts? I wonder. I mean,after all it was 1934! You couldn't do that in Hollywood 20 years after that..............

The film has a brooding kind of energy, that is not often seen in early films such as this. It is clear that the person making the movie is was not your typical film maker.Even though it is not a film I would want to see again, many scenes from the film do replay in my mind.The film seems to have an impact on the unconscious mind of the viewer.I believe this due to the fact that the scenes replay in your mind almost begging for an explanation or perhaps redemption. The film explores the dark side of human desire.We all seem to want to peer in at those thoughts. Thankfully most of us only want to peer in!

Maniac is a badly conceived and executed film from 1934, with only wacky characters populating the reels saying and doing bizarre things. There's syringes waved about in nearly every scene, bare female breasts occasionally, a cat's eye popped out, a cat-fight, so many verbal and filmic non-sequiteurs it must have been made on the hoof. Maniac could have lasted a couple of hours if all the dropped threads had been picked up - just think what a state we the audience would have been in! I presume the Wild Man was still raping the naked reanimated woman at the end?

And yet after the the 50 minutes were up I felt vaguely satisfied and could have stood a bit more of this crazy world. Even with all of the on-screen tutorials this was not a pretentious film like Blazing Saddles or irredeemable like Plan 9, what you see is what was basically intended in the first place. It took me many plays in the 70's to fall in love with Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, maybe I've got to see it again to move Kane off No. 1 spot ... Maybe I could have done with a few familiar faces - Lionel Atwill, Bela or Boris, or ... Dwight Frye!

No, it's OK as it is as splendid rubbish.

This clunker is probably worse than anything Ed Wood made.....yeah this movie sucks bad.But at least it's so bad it's watchable and you'll wonder who on Earth would or could make such a horrible mess.

A crazy assistant to a crazy scientist kills the scientist and assumes his identity using cleverly applied make up.Well it wasn't that cleverly done as the young lab assistant didn't really look like the old scientist but he still seemed to fool everyone in the picture.Anyway in trying to pull off his scheme ,whatever it was,the assistant manages to mistakenly create a crazed lunatic who proceeds to attack and carry off a woman who had been raised from the dead by the scientist before he was killed.Actually I'm not too sure about the plot.It sort of wandered all over the place.The crazed man wandered off in the woods carrying the woman.While carrying her he makes a clumsy swipe to get her nightie off her breasts and I think he made another swipe even after the nightie was already down, raking nothing but boob.And I thought he was crazy!Anyway the crazed man plot is forgotten after the boobies are seen and we move on to something else that may be the plot for a few scenes.......

And all during the movie descriptions of mental diseases, using the clunky understanding they had of mental problems back in 1934, were being shown on the screen and then it was right back to the movie.

The sets were actually pretty creepy looking.....of course black and white was always the best for horror films anyway and the old dark lab and the underground chambers were pretty cool.A couple of other things make this film at least watchable.....breasts! That's right ,besides the above described scene there are a few other scenes of bare breasts despite being such an old film.Of course like most films with bare breasts,the only reason to have bare breasts is .....well....to show bare breasts.Also there is a scene where a cat gets it's eyeball popped out and then the crazy lab assistant eats it----I guess to show he was really ,really crazy.

Besides the disjointed nonsensical plot the script was awful and the acting was as bad as any movie I've ever see.I mean these guys make Steven Seagal look like a master thespian.

An actress in the opening credits was named Phyllis Diller but I'm trying to figure out the math.This stinker was made in 1934,and Diller is in her early 90's today I think and in the film from 74 years ago she would have been 20 or so but she already looked 50 years old so I'm puzzled.Surely there can't have been two Phyllis Dillers? Oh well all that stuff is what makes a film like this fun to watch.Unlike it's later bad horror movie cousins in the 1950's,at least this movie has some nudity to save it from being a complete waste.

(An update-- further research revealed that the Phyllis Diller in this movie is NOT the comedienne Phyllis Diller.Who would have guessed that there were two?)

Yes, this is an awful movie, but the people who came to see these films weren't looking for quality; they were looking for titillation. And certainly this film delivers the good for nudity, outre violence, and drug use.

What has always bothered me after seeing this movie is that I could swear they meant this to be a vehicle for Bela Lugosi and Dwight Frye. First, there's the mad doctor part--certainly in Bela's range--and then there is that troubling, meaningless accent. To the best of my knowledge, Horace Carpenter didn't have an accent (and the one he uses in the movie is god-awful!) But the lines sound like they were meant for a central-European actor...especially one given to long tirades.

As for the assistant? Obviously Dwight was used to playing second fiddle to Bela, and in this movie would actually get to take over the movie! Even though Bela was noticeably taller than Dwight, Bill Woods appears to be shorter than Carpenter--I don't think the director thought that through.

Only a theory, of course, and unprovable as far as I know. But it makes more sense than the casting that WAS used.

The filmmaker made an exploitation film, featuring several nude scenes, in the guise of a public-service film about mental illness. He injected several silent-era written descriptions of various psychiatric illnesses at what appears to be random places, as little more than scene breaks. It falls together in a funny mishmash that is fun to see almost 90 years later.

I'm not sure how anyone who would invest the time to watch a movie like this would dislike Maniac. It isn't scary, but really are any of these black and white antique horror movies? What these classics do have that today's horror film's do not are a great sense of atmosphere - and Maniac does have that. It also has some shocking scenes that you won't find in any of the Universal classics. Some people complain that the actors are overacting, but I find that to be the case in almost all of these old films, unlike today's horror movies which boast plenty of under-acting, I find the former much more enjoyable than the latter. At 51 minutes, the story moves along a very quick pace with plenty of twists, turns, shocks, and odd characters to keep you interested. I think all horror movies should take a tip from Maniac and keep the running time to around an hour long as they always seem to get retarded during the final third.

first off you got to love the Edgar Allen Poe reference in the movie where the mad scietist, puts the guy behind the brick wall. and plasters the whole thing up with him still behind the wall. at first i didn't exactly know what to make of this movie,, yeah sure it's weird and all but you have to consider that a lot of these b movies were made in the 30's and they churned them out like crazy.. some people say this is the worst movie that they have ever seen,, not by a longshot,, it wasn't that bad,, try a dubbed Seagal movie sometime,, no this isn't near as bad as everyone says,, you gotta be a Poe fan to appreciate,, but ont he other hand,, this movie isn't great,, not something you can watch over and over again either,, so take this review with a grain of salt