Maniac (1934)    Roadshow Attractions/Horror    RT: 51 minutes    No MPAA rating (violence, nudity)    Director: Dwain Esper    Screenplay: Hildagarde Stadie    Music: N/A    Cinematography: William C. Thompson    Release date: September 11, 1934 (US)    Cast: Bill Woods, Horace Carpenter, Ted Edwards, Phyllis Diller, Theo Ramsey, Jenny Dark, Marvel Andre, Celia McCann, Maria Altura, J.P. Wade, Marion Blackton, Satan (the Cat).    Box Office: N/A

Rating: ****

 Almost 90 years after the fact, a few key cast members of the 1934 exploitation movie Maniac are still not identified. It doesn’t take a super-sleuth to figure out why. One look at the finished product tells you all you need to know. Would you want anybody to know you had an active role in creating one of the worst movies ever made? How would the actor playing the cat-loving neighbor ever explain it to his grandchildren? For his sake, I hope they have a sense of humor should they ever uncover this embarrassing family secret.

 Maniac comes from the same school of cinema as Reefer Madness and Sex Madness in that it purports to be an educational film informing the public of a great social ill, mental illness. Titles are interspersed throughout identifying various types of mental illnesses and describing their symptoms. The descriptions provided don’t shed a lot of light on the matter. Licensed psychiatrists would have a difficult time understanding them. It’s a perfect example of how thoroughly incompetent Maniac truly is in its supposed purpose.

 Its educational intent is a mere façade for what Maniac really is, a schlocky pre-Code horror piece that leans heavily on Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Black Cat”. I’ll come back to that later. There are actually two maniacs in Maniac. The first one is Don Maxwell (Woods), a former vaudevillian reduced to playing Igor to mad scientist Dr. Meirschultz (Carpenter), the second maniac. It seems that Dr. M has created an elixir that brings the dead back to life. All he needs is a corpse, preferably a recently deceased one, to test it out. As luck would have it, Don’s specialty back in his show biz days was impersonations. He impersonates the coroner in order to gain access to the morgue where he and Dr. M steal the body of young woman who committed suicide (Altura, one of the uncredited ones). The doc injects her with the formula and she starts showing signs of life.

 Next, the doctor wants to attempt to revive the dead with a heart transplant. The heart he plans to use is beating away in a beaker on his table. Yep, he gave it a shot of his magic potion. When his assistant fails to procure a corpse, Dr. M demands that he shoot himself in the head so that he may proceed with his diabolical experiment. Don shoots the doctor instead and takes his place when the wife (Diller, NOT the one you’re thinking of) of a mental patient (Edwards) shows up asking for help. Don, as Dr. M, originally plans to inject the patient with water, but he accidentally grabs the wrong syringe and ends up giving him a shot of adrenaline. Naturally, it makes him go berserk. He snatches the zombie-like reanimated woman and runs off with her. BOOBIE SHOT! Maniac is pre-Code, remember?

 So where does Poe come into it? I’m about to tell you. When the mental patient’s wife finds the body of the real Dr. M, she blackmails Don. He decides to hide the body in a wall in the basement. When he isn’t looking, a black cat jumps in and stays there while he finishes rebuilding the wall. It meows when the cops show up later, alerting them to the hidden body. I can’t say for sure, but I have a feeling the author would be amused by how they used his material. Perhaps I ought to explain further.

 At some point, Maniac cuts to a scene of four scantily-clad women having a conversation in their apartment. One of them, Alice (Ramsey), is Don’s estranged wife. One of her friends shows her a story in the newspaper about her hubby being sought by the executors of the estate of a rich uncle who just died. It seems he’s the sole inheritor, but they can’t locate him. Luckily, Alice knows where to find him. She shows up at the lab to deliver the news only for fake Dr. M- i.e. Don- to tell Alice her husband isn’t there at the moment. He asks her to come back that night. With the intention of killing two birds with one stone (if you’ll excuse the expression), he lures the mental patient’s wife to the lab with the intent of pitting both women against each other. YAY, CAT FIGHT! They go at each other with hypodermic needles in the basement. That’s when the cops finally show up and find Dr. M’s body.

 Retitled Sex Maniac soon after its initial release, Maniac is terrible under any title. To its credit, it’s terrible to the point of unintentional comedy. I haven’t laughed this much in a long time. It’s so bad, it’s GREAT! Its highlight has to be the wild overacting. The performances give new meaning to OTT whether it’s Woods’ loopy portrayal of a man descending into madness or Carpenter’s overwrought depiction of a wild-haired mad scientist who laughs maniacally as he explains his latest experiment. At times, he acts like he’s delivering a Shakespearean soliloquy. The dialogue they’re given to recite is God-awful and riotously funny at the same time.

 HOWEVER, nothing either one of them do compares to Edwards who takes his performance to a level not of this world. When injected with the wrong needle, he writhes and twitches and contorts his face as he transforms into a primal state. It must be seen to be fully appreciated. The dialogue that accompanies it makes it even funnier: “OH! Stealing through my body! OOH! Creeping through my veins! Pouring in my blood! OH, darts of fire in my brain! Stabbing me! Agony! I can’t stand it, this torture! This torment! I can’t! I can’t! I won’t! I won’t!” I dare say, Dave O’Brien- the guy who played Ralph in Reefer Madness- took acting lessons from this guy.

 Written and directed by the husband-wife team of Hildagarde Stadie and Dwain Esper, Maniac was clearly made on the cheap. It’s a public domain title if that tells you anything. Most of it is shot on the same eight-square-foot set with different props; that is, except the for the basement scenes which look like they were really shot in somebody’s basement. Its disjointed narrative makes it feel like it was stitched together by Dr. Frankenstein in his laboratory. There are numerous shots of cats running about or fighting. In the movie’s most infamous scene, Don/Dr. M squeezes a cat’s head until its eyeball pops out then eats it (the eyeball NOT the cat). The scenes of Don losing his mind are accompanied by superimposed images of demonic figures from the 1922 Danish film Haxan.

 There is much to laugh at in Maniac, a movie kept mercifully short by its makers, running less than an hour. At 51 minutes, it doesn’t have time to wear out its welcome. It is inept in every way and in every sense of the word. That it tries to take itself and its subject seriously makes it all the funnier. In its defense, Maniac is NOT unwatchable. On the contrary, it’s extremely watchable. You won’t be able to avert your eyes or divert your attention. It’s so awesomely bad, it’s AWESOME!