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Maniac (1934)

Dir: Dwain Esper

Dr. Meirschultz (Horace B. Carpenter) is all bushy hair, wild beard, unflattering round glasses and sinister European accent that turns all his W's into V's. He's also a complete fruitcake!
Along with his mysterious, ex actor on the run, assistant named Maxwell (Bill Woods) he is up to all manner of wacky experiments.

With much gusto Meirschultz announces his plan…."Tonight my dear Maxwell…I'm veady to try my experiment on a human…In the morgue there is a lethal gas suicide…An ideal specimen"!

And so, with Maxwell impersonating the local Coroner, the crazy Doc sneaks into the morgue and with a manic grin injects the body of the young female suicide with his secret 'gland' serum!
A quick bit of 'breaking out the rigor mortis' later and hey presto! She is alive!
With that she is quickly ferreted away to the mad Doctors surgery.

Maxwell is not at all happy with the situation, and goes through much hand wringing, hair pulling angst…"It's horrible I tell you! Working on the dead, trying to bring back life…It's not natural! You and your weird ideas".
The Doc has no time for such things though…."Vonce a ham…alvays a ham" is his view of Maxwell. (and this guy should know)!

The old Doc is not finished yet! No sir! He wants Maxwell to get another body so he can transplant a heart he keeps in a jar into it!
When Maxwell fails in his task though the now psychotic Meirschultz, in full rant mode, gives Maxwell a gun and tells him to shoot himself so he can be the corpse to receive the heart!!
Maxwell isn't as stupid as his hair would have you believe though…and shoots the demented Doc instead!

Now in a spot of bother Maxwell, his hair following his brain into ever increasing insanity, decides to impersonate the crazy Doc with some hastily applied makeup and false facial hair!
But soon the crazed role starts to takes over the actor…And with Jones of the 'Missing Persons Bureau' on the case of the missing corpse, things can only get worse!...

 

Come back with me dear reader…to the times when Exploitation was the Carnival sideshow freak of cinema. Come and meet some pioneers!
Dwain Esper was one of the infamous '40 Thieves', a group of money making showmen who saw the promise of the still fresh and exciting medium of 'film'.
Using the marketing tricks most of them had learnt in the 'Carny' business, where they would shout the pleasure of 'The Dog Faced Boy' and the 'Bountiful Mistress of the Vail's" to passing punters, this group would go on to make, produce and distribute some of the most crazy, warped and yes…falsely marketed Exploitation movies ever seen. These guys would mainly show their cinematic wares in travelling theatres that were no more than tents. It was cheap, it bypassed any puritan cinema owners and they were easily packed up if the authorities came-a-calling.

Esper and his Wife Hildegarde are perhaps best known for 'tweaking' a righteous anti-pot flick called "Tell your Children" (with a bit of added 'females in underwear' shots) and re-titling it "Reefer Madness".
But it's in a complete work of their own like "Maniac" that their 'talent' shines through.

Mainstream perception that movies in the 30's were basically respectable and mostly distinguished (the odd stag reel not withstanding) and that only Cecil B DeMille could justify breasts as they were 'historical breasts', "Maniac" is a film that blows those foolish perceptions away …Here we have a film that is almost a crystal ball into the future of exploitation.

Shocked by the infamous animal exploitation in 70's/80's extreme classics like "Cannibal Holocaust"? Well here comes Dwain, over 40 years earlier with some nasty (but non-lethal) cat fights!
And I mean the furs flies! First 2 cats beat the living hell out of each other in a mortuary in a most ferocious way. Just as you get over those battling moggies, a dog leaps out of the night and attacks another cat, with startling brutality, in the street.

More animal abuse is shoved into our faces with a very unpleasant scene of Maxwell popping out a cat's eye!
It does not seem to be a real eye, but something small and black shoved into the cat's already eyeless socket (the black cat it's meant to be suddenly turns into what looks like a ginger cat for this scene!), but it's still nasty stuff as the cat is most certainly being roughly manhandled and is not in the least bit happy.
And when I tell you that Maxwell picks the eye up and declares "Why…it's not unlike and oyster or a grape", you have all you need to work out the scene's payoff!

Like many of the blatantly exploitative films of this time (and later as well, the old tricks die-hard) the makers attempted to coat their exploitation in a bit of 'education'. In the case of "Maniac" it's in the form of a few worthy text panels written in 'medical speak', on various forms of mental illness, that split up the action.
Like they always say…simply filming people having sex is pornography, but have a Doctor stand in the corner…and it's education folks!

To add a bit of titillation Esper sneaks in a few bare breast shots and a whole sequence that has four women wandering around in the bedroom clad only in their underwear (one of whom sounds like Minnie Mouse…only not as well acted). Basically if Dwain can slide in a bit of 'naughtiness'…he will do!

But the film's real 'strengths' are in its script and acting.

The plot starts off slightly mad and then goes off into the realms of utter dementia as crazy event follows crazy event, and an almost ceaseless parade of mad characters are thrown around with wild abandon.
Soon the viewer almost feels that abnormality of the mind is the norm!

Look out for the Wife of a man named Buckley (British born Ted Edwards) who thinks he's the Orang-utan killer from Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue"!!
Thinking Maxwell is the Doctor she want him to treat her deluded Hubby…In a panic Maxwell searches through Meirschultz's medical bag for a quick fix… "Super Adrenaline? No…not that".
In the end he decides to fill a syringe with harmless water, but silly old Maxwell picks up the wrong syringe…so into the Hubby goes that SUPER ADRENALINE!…And boy, that is not a good thing!
A few seconds later, his hands and face contorting, he exclaims…"Uggghhhh…Stealing through my body! Creeping through my veins! Pouring in my Blood! Ugghhh…Darts of fire in my brain! Stabbing me! Agony"! And promptly does one of the best Dr Jekyll into My Hyde impressions ever seen as he becomes a hunched and snarling, homicidal toothy loon!
It's outrageous ham acting at it's very finest! Well done Mr Edwards!

In fact all the acting is a thing of joy. Utterly dreadful on the surface it may be…but damn, it's enjoyable!

Both Carpenter and Woods are suitably crazed with Carpenter especially entertaining as he stretches his hands upward to Heaven and seemingly rants to God himself!
These insane rants and psychotic outbursts are accompanied by footage of leering Devils and clawed hands superimposed over the actors faces (culled from 1924's "Dante's Inferno") and that dear reader is as serious as this movie gets about mental illness!

And as stated before no one is normal anyway! And the following scene and dialogue are a classic example…
For some reason, during Jones's investigations, we are introduced the owner of a cat fur farm (!) who proceeds to inform us of his cats 'n' rats approach to business!
Fur Man: "Cats eat rats, and…rats eat raw meat. That is, they eat the carcasses of the cats. So…The rats eat the cats, the cats eat the rats and I get the skins"!
Jones: "Why…rats eating cats! That is news".
Fur Man: "Simple ain't it"!

Oh God help me! I feel I am joining the ranks of the crazed just typing this!

Not even the 'Gentle Sex' escapes the lunacy! A wonderfully bizarre sight is a screaming, shrieking, scratching, hair pulling, dress ripping fight between two women in Maxwell's basement!
A fight that ends with them beating the crap out of each other with every heavy object they manage to grab!

So there we have it…Utter madness on celluloid!
A blueprint for the late 60's Exploitation explosion, drawn up over 30 years before it.
Nudity, poor abused animals, violence, psychotic scientists, feline eyeball munching, battling women, snarling homicidal loons who think they're Orang-utan's….and tips for successful cat fur farming!
Hey! Perhaps it's educational after all…