It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Unbelievably campy and funny. This old slasher film had the worst acting and accents out there. It is in the Top 100 amusingly bad films and rightly so with evil laughs, bad lines, and terrible acting. There is a huge heart suspended in a jar that is beating. An evil doctor with a German accent invents a substance that can bring a recently dead person back to life. He ends up getting killed by his mad assistant, who doesn't bring him back to life, who then impersonates him.This is a 1934 film that contains nudity to my surprise.My only complaint is that this in a full screen edition which noticeably cuts off some of the writing on the screen.Mrs. Buckley was portrayed by Phyllis Diller...okay not the famous comedian, but it is neat to watch it on the credit roll.

Upon second viewing, Dwain Esper's 'Maniac' had the offbeat charm of an amusing Ed Wood movie. Esper must be credited with offering up what in its time may have been the worst movie ever made.On the plus side, the nudity contained in the movie is surreal and enchanting in its leering way. Scenes are very brief and fairly provocative. Frankly, I needed these scenes to wake me up. Wood's 'Orgy of the Dead', by contrast, becomes a ninety minute 'borefest' of titty dancers; it is presented in such an insipid way. For sheer bizarro value, I have frankly never seen a cat's eye gouged out, and then eaten by the sadist, who likens the eye to a 'grape'. (We've long ago ALMOST forgotten Divine eating poodle poop in 'Pink Flamingos'.) And I must admit, Bill Woods is not bad in the demented lead. In fact, this film could have made a decent horror movie had not the story stopped frequently to strains of sappy music as the screen displayed psychobabble supposedly describing the story in 'clinical' terms. These interruptions are comical and annoying at the same time. And Horace Carpenter would have fit beautifully into the strange Ed Wood entourage. It was hilarious as Carpenter accuses Woods' character of being a 'ham'...as Horace chews the scenery like a ravenous screen glutton! (Carpenter may have thought he was in a silent film for all I know!)This is a bad film, and I refuse to read any deep artistic value into what was done here. It lacks the sophisticated humor of 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'. And Bill Woods is no Tor Johnson. If you feel compelled to watch this oddity (maybe you loath cats), try to remember this cinema will never be confused with 'Citizen Kane'.

When you think of exploitation movies you normally think of the '70's. However as it turns out exploitation flicks have been around a lot longer. This movie features some violence and nudity and would had never got distributed because of that through the normal channels.Director Dwain Esper always distributed his own movies by renting out a cinema so he could play his movies. He advertised his movies by mostly putting up poster with some X's put over it, implying that it were movies for adults only. I don't think he ever got very rich from his movies, though obviously his movies also weren't exactly expensive ones to make.To be honest, the concept of the whole movie didn't seemed that horrible and it also didn't started off that bad. It certainly was comparable with most other genre movies from the same period but let me tell you that things get worse pretty rapidly.It's basically a really amateur like made movie. It's not only horrible cheap looking, it's also really bad written and acted. But lots of blame for this movie also of course really needs to go to director Dwain Esper. It seemed like he at times was just doing something without knowing how it would turn out for the movie. It's funny how in one scene they couldn't even get the camera focus right, when the character that is talking is all blurry since the focus is on something that is in the foreground and they simply did not bother to fix this at all when they must have find this out.I can understand and see what the movie was trying to do with it's story and to be frank, the movie seemed to have some good ideas but it's all being handled extremely poorly. I just couldn't understand and follow this movie at times because it often becomes such an incredible mess. Often the movie simply makes no sense at all.The movie is mostly still 'enjoyable' to watch because of its extremely bad acting. All of the actors go extremely over-the-top and some of them never had any experiences with acting, obviously.Nevertheless, really one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Luckily it's only about 50 minutes short.2/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Esper's most notorious effort is almost a fiction film; I say almost because while there is certainly a story being told here, there are continual interruptions – sometimes in mid-sequence! – by title cards blandly delineating the nature of various types of mental disorders. The plot concerns a mad scientist and his even nuttier assistant – cue some of the most florid, yet oddly enjoyable, overacting in movie history – who steal a fresh corpse from the morgue (looking more like the basement of Dracula's castle!) in order to revive it by transplanting a beating human heart the doc has somehow acquired. However, the two cannot see eye to eye – especially when the old man asks his pupil to shoot himself so that he will then perform a transplant on him as well! Naturally, at this, the latter kills the scientist instead and, being something of an actor ("Once a ham, always a ham!" Dr. Meirschultz snidely remarks) impersonates him, since he happens to own a personal make-up kit and carries it along with him! Soon, he gets his first patient – a man who thinks he is the killer ape from Poe's "Murders In The Rue Morgue"(!): however, the inexperienced medico 'unwittingly' (hardly since the two needles are so obviously different in size!) administers the wrong medication and he goes berserk, first ranting about how his brain is on fire and then making off into the countryside with the revived girl from the morgue and ravages her (after which he is never heard from again)!! That said, his wife – who had accompanied him to the doctor's – is a schemer and hangs around; more trouble comes the protagonist's way when he is visited by his estranged wife while he is posing as the scientist. So, he has a stroke of genius and sends the two women to the basement of his lab armed with hypodermic needles making each believe the other is dangerous and needs to be sedated! Still, the much-talked about cat-fight which ensues between them does not really involve the syringes as they are dropped practically instantly. Also worth mentioning is the liberal but totally irrelevant use of footage from two Silent masterworks – Benjamin Christensen's HAXAN (1922) and Fritz Lang's THE NIBELUNGEN (1924) – in an attempt to emphasize the lead character's deranged state-of-mind, and also the abhorrent treatment of cats on display – among the film's most infamous sequences is that in which a feline has one of its eyes ripped out and eaten (though a completely different and apparently half-blind animal was used expressly for this shot!) but when it is violently thrown against a sheet of glass, this seems all-too-real!! The film ends with the Police bursting on the scene to find the two women still in the basement and the deceased Professor walled-up a' la "The Black Cat", having been alerted to his presence – as in Poe's tale (and countless other films) by the meowing of the feline which had itself been inadvertently entombed! Had Esper exerted more self-control and infused some real cinematic sense into his picture, MANIAC could well pass off for one of the oddest horror outings of the 1930s…but, as it stands, can only be deemed a relic and an undeniable curio – as both 'Grade Z' exploitation and, for what it is worth, a record of known variations of insanity (and their attributes) up to that time. Incidentally, in case anyone is wondering, this film rates higher than BOMB for me because - unlike NARCOTIC (1933) which was a total bore - this actually manages to be so preposterous as to be highly amusing.