Maniac (1934)

AKA: Sex Maniac

Director: Dwain Esper

Writer: Hildegarde Stadie

Starring: Bill Woods, Horace B. Carpenter, Ted Edwards, Phyllis Diller, Thea Ramsey, Jenny Dark, Marvelle Andre, Celia McCann, John P. Wade, Marian Constance Blackton, Satan the Cat

More info: IMDb

Tagline:  He menaced women with weird desires!

Plot: A former vaudevillian gifted at impersonation assists a mad scientist in reanimating corpses and soon goes mad himself.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  YES!

This isn't your ordinary B-picture from the thirties.  No siree Bob.  In the span of 50 minutes you get schooled in psychology...

artistic flares like seeing two cats fight in the basement early on only to have two grown women fight it out to the death in that same spot near the end, a mad scientist pop a cat's eye out of its socket (don't worry, the cat had a glass eye but it will freak your shit out when you see it) and then eat the eyeball, and then there's tha sax!

Holy SHIT!  The sex angle doesn't come into play until the last fifteen minutes and being how I didn't know a single thing about this picture going in, I was very pleasantly surprised.  It's such a rare thing.  This is great 1930s exploitation.  Is the acting bad?  Not really.  It's goofy at times but it's not bad.  I really don't understand some of the comments in IMDb saying this is the worst (or one of the worst) movies ever made.  It's far from it unless you've only ever watched Jean Luc Goddard flicks.  This one is short and fun.  It's worth watching for any of the scenes already mentioned but you've got to watch it for the two broads duking it out at the end.  It gets brutal.   It's true that there's no accounting for taste.  I've seen some horrible pictures and this ain't one of them, sister!  Not by a maniacal mile.