It's finally going to happen, Dr Meirschultz (Horace B. Carpenter) is ready to experiment on a human being. He informs his out of work actor assistant, Don Maxwell (William Woods) in no uncertain terms that he must help him secure a fresh corpse from the local mortuary, but Maxwell is not so sure that he wants to go through with it and make a dead body come back to life thanks to the doctor's new serum. Nevertheless, Meirschultz is determined, and tells him that he should do one of his famed impersonations to gain entry into the place, so off they go, syringe in hand...
And this is an educational film! Believe that and you'll believe anything. Exploitation pioneer (if that's the right word) Dwain Esper was the chap behind this little item, which has been taking viewers aback ever since he unleashed it upon an unsuspecting public back in the mid-thirties, just after the new censorship code from the Hays Office had been put into effect. So how did Esper get away with exhibiting films that featured sex and violence in far more graphic fashion than anything else out there in America at the time? By taking prints of this film, and others he had created, and touring the States with them, showing it at any cinema that would have him, and leaving audiences so aghast that there were stories of him and his team being run out of town as a result.
Whether they were aghast at that sex and violence or whether it was the umbrage that they felt having parted with their money for something so poorly manufactured is open to question, but there's no denying this was stronger stuff than what most of the rest of Hollywood were releasing at the time, even in the horror field. That didn't necessarily mean it was better, as it was plain to see that Esper's main intention was to shock and titillate, no matter how ineptly he put over those two reactions, so yes, there was nudity, and yes, there were characters getting brutally attacked, but if you think of Maniac as being the equivalent of those straight to DVD shocker cheapies that only set out to make as much money as quickly as possible then you'll have an idea of what you were in for.
Except that while the more modern efforts will simply have you resenting the time and money you spent on them, with this you don't feel as if you were wasting your time. This is largely due to the fact that it's a film that truly lives up to its title, as there are not one but an abundance of maniacs here, from the doctors to the patients to the neighbour who explains that he breeds cats to eat rats then to be eaten by more rats so he can sell their fur. Like you do. There's not a lot that makes sense here, yet senselessness is the order of the day, as Esper, or his screenwriter wife Hildegarde Stadie anyway, was evidently an Edgar Allan Poe aficionado who settled upon The Black Cat to draw her inspiration from. If you know that story, you'll recognise aspects of it here.
That includes the black cat who torments Maxwell, so much so that he grabs it, pops its eye out and promptly munches on it - not really, but through the magic of special effects as the eye is a grape and the cat had a one-eyed stunt double to stand in for the popping scene. That's one of the more notorious moments, before even mentioning the random craziness that you'll encounter every minute of this under-an-hour-long movie, as Maxwell, having let his boss down, opts to kill him and take his place by disguising himself as the distinctive ex-scientist. Then a couple arrive with the wife (Phyllis Diller, but not that Phyllis Diller) asking for the doctor because her husband thinks he's the killer from Murders in the Rue Morgue - this chap undergoes an incredible scene of insanity culminating in him kidnapping the dead woman that was brought back to life, and who knows what happens to them after that? It's shoddy, surprising, and utterly nuts from beginning to end, with ludicrous acting throughout - I haven't covered half the madness contained here.
Display comments