Maniac [M]

Don Maxwell, a vaudeville performer, becomes the lab assistant of an eccentric scientist experimenting with the reanimation of dead tissue. During one such experiment Don accidentally kills the scientist and the shock of murder sends him into a rapid downward spiral of madness. He takes the scientist’s place and continues his work, but with his mind rapidly deteriorating it’s only a matter of time before his fear and madness breaks him. 

Ok so it only sits at a running time of 50 minutes, but there are enough chills and thrills in this movie to counteract that fact entirely. We’re talking mass amounts of mad scientist screaming, captivating and repelling super-adrenaline fuelled transformation, unfounded murderous tendencies, dead bodies buried behind bricks walls, and horrible violence against cats (that was undoubtedly the most terrifying, I’m seriously going to have nightmares now). 

Don Maxwell, a vaudeville performer, becomes the lab assistant of an eccentric scientist experimenting with the reanimation of dead tissue. During one such experiment Don accidentally kills the scientist and the shock of murder sends him into a rapid downward spiral of madness. He takes the scientist’s place and continues his work, but with his mind rapidly deteriorating it’s only a matter of time before his fear and madness breaks him. 

So it seemed to me that this movie was an exploration into the mind of a maniac who appears to suffer from pretty much every form of psychoses under the sun, we’ve got dementia, paranoiac, depression, possible amnesia, guilt complex, identity confusion… everything. What’s fascinating, and sometimes a little confusing, is that the film is put together in a way that is reflective of this mindset of the central maniac. During each episode of paranoia, or fear, or whatever, creepy images are opaquely superimposed over the top of the shot. We’ve got images of elongated hands doing voodoo magic, and tribal rituals, and who knows what else and it really does bring this element of fear and mystery and incomprehensibility to the entire thing. It was effective, but in a really strange sort of way. 

Applause has to go out to Bill Woods who stars as Don Maxwell. He delivers this great dual performance, as himself and himself as the scientist and he does it all with a captivating fierceness that’s really creepy in itself. I’m literally sort of rendered speechless by the weirdness and terror of this movie, it’s good and scary but sometimes the scares come from these confronting images that you’re just really not expecting (and particularly not expecting them to look so authentic, which is ever more disturbing). 

Starring Horace B. Carpenter, Ted Edwards, Phyllis Diller, Theo Ramsey, Jenny Dark, Marvelle Andre, Celia McCann, and John P. Wade, Maniac is a strange and disturbing movie filled with nudity, action, madness, drama, violence, and murder. It’s pretty chilling and weird and scary and yeah I don’t actually know how I feel about it… … …