Review: Maniac (1934)

You have to see this one to believe it.

Well...actually, even after you see it, you still might not believe it.

Nutty Dr. Meirschultz (Horace Carpenter) has come up with a way to revive the recently dead. He wants to steal the body of a suicide victim from the morgue because she's "perfect" for his experiments. (Why somebody who wants to be dead qualifies as "perfect" for being brought back to life is beyond me. Guess I'm just not mad-scientist material after all.) He tells his assistant, former actor Don Maxwell (Bill Woods) his plans, to which Maxwell replied, "It's horrible, I tell you--working with the dead, trying to bring back life. It's not natural. You with your weird ideas. Haven't I stayed here nursing dying dogs?" The doctor's response to this bit of overacting is precious: "Once a ham, always a ham!" (Tell it, brother, tell it!)

Meirschultz and Maxwell (disguised as the coroner) sneak into the morgue, bring the young lady back to life and sneak her out again. But is the doc satisfied? Nope. He wants to bring back someone with "a shattered heart" and do a little Frankenstein number with a beating heart he has in a jar on the laboratory table. He hands Maxwell a revolver and urges his to commit suicide, promising to bring him right back.

Maxwell, in a stunning display of good sense, plugs Dr. Meirschultz instead.

Unfortunately for Maxwell, a patient of Dr. Meirschultz's needs immediate care--the patient's wife tells Maxwell that her husband thinks he's "the orangutan killer" in Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue"--and Maxwell has to do an impromptu impersonation of the late mad scientist. Things go down hill here from there.

The rest of the movie skids all over the road. There's nudity (when "the orangutan killer" decides to undress and strangle the revived suicide victim), catfights (literal), more catfights (figurative, when two women go at each other with hypodermic needles in a cellar) and enough bad acting to fill two or three Ed Woods movies. Some of the actors munch on the scenery like hogs at a trough, while others are obviously reading cue cards (and at least one is blind, stinking drunk). Maxwell's rapidly exploding madness is illustrated by lifted scenes from Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (an especially bizarre silent movie), while helpful title cards explain the various stages of clinical dementia he's going through.

The plot even features a partial lift from Poe's "The Black Cat" (damn, poor Edgar can't get a break, can he?) and a more-than-kinda gross scene where Maxwell appears to pop out a cat's eye and eat it like an oyster. (I've watched this scene frame by frame on DVD--yes, I own Maniac on DVD...stop looking at me like that!--but I can't tell whether the cat's eye is real or not. If I had to guess, though, I'd vote for "not" just because of the marked lack of blood involved.)

Anybody who claims Plan Nine from Outer Space is the worst movie ever made has obviously never checked out this contender.