Maniac (1934)

"Maniac" is aka "Sex Maniac" and why "Sex Maniac" is beyond me because neither one of the main characters (Don Maxwell & Dr. Meirschultz) are sex crazy that I could tell. The film is extremely loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat". In all honesty I do not believe this film is supposed to be pure horror. I think it is an early comedy-horror film. Why? The deliberately comical looks on the actors faces, the deliberately bad over-acting, the deliberately bad script with lines such as: "I think too much of Satan to use cats for experiments" etc... it all adds up to a comedy-horror in my beliefs and NOT a real or pure horror film.The film is simply awful and weird but, believe it or not, there are worse "horror" films out there to watch. You don't believe me? The take a look at the movie called "Monster (1980)" it is aka "Monstroid". "Monstroid" makes "(Sex) Maniac" look like a very artful and well done film.Overacting? Yes this movie has it - but some of the other older films are full of overacting as well. It's not unusual for a films during this time era. Would I recommend the movie "Maniac (1934)" to others? Only to the people looking for a terrible horror film to watch or to those that are extremely curious to see just how bad this film really is.Why did I give this film 2 out of 10 stars instead of just one star? Because I did get a couple of giggles out of this awful flick.2/10

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.

Don't look at this as a horror film. It is, and not much different than other horror films of the time, but it is more an exploitation film of the 30s. This was made before the production code, and the director, Dwain Esper, tries to push the envelope.Horace B. Carpenter as Dr. Meirschultz was the perfect mad scientist. He even had the mad scientist laugh down pat. Make-up artist William Woods, on the lam from the law, played his assistant.It was a little bit Reanimator, and a little bit Frankenstein. It was not supposed to be a comedy, but it was funny throughout.I had to laugh at the use of psychiatric terms popular at the time. This puts it in the category of "message" films, whereby they tried to use messages to cover the exploitation.Tame by today's standards, it is nevertheless a glimpse into moviedom's past.