Following up from last week's special on the history of classical exploitation movies, this week sees a special exploitation double featuring Dwain Esper's 1934 anti-classic Maniac and a mystery 2nd feature...Maniac USA/1934/B&W/110mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Dwain Esper. Cast: Bill Woods, Horace Carpenter, Ted Edwards, Phyllis Diller.
This truly bizarre no-budget exploitation film made by a husband and wife team is thinly disguised as a docudrama on madness with more than a passing nod to Edgar Allan Poe. The opening title proclaims fear to be a psychic disease. A mad scientist, Dr Meirschultz, experiments on dead bodies obtained from the morgue by his even more insane assistant, Maxwell, a former vaudeville impersonator, who turns out to be the true maniac. Maxwell's bizarre visions include excerpts from Witchcraft Through the Ages and Siegfried.
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