Halloween Edition: Maniac (1934) Movie Review

Maniac (1934) Movie Review

**SPOILER ALERT! This review contains the movie ending**

I never knew that a movie with a run time of 51 minutes could be such a mess.

The acting is bad and in some scenes there are a few characters that might have actually been drunk while filming this movie because I couldn't understand a word they were saying. I think at one point someone might have mentioned Santa Clause but I'm not positive since it sounded like he had a mouthful of marbles. 

The first half of this movie doesn't even match up with the second half. The movie starts off by ripping off the premise of Frankenstein by a mad doctor and his assistant wanted to bring a body back to life. They steal a body from the morgue and inject her with fluids and wait for her to come alive. While they wait the doctor wants the assistant to steal another body but the assistant doesn't and the doctor screams his disappointment at him. The assistant than kills the doctor and steals his identity. The "doctor" is visited by a man who is having problems and the "doctor" accidentally injects super adrenaline instead of water which causes the man to start growling, snorting and when he notices the female "body" that was previously injected walking around he grabs her and takes off into the woods where it is insinuated that he rapes her off screen. After this scene neither of these people are seen in the movie.

The writing is just bad. 

"I think too much of Satan to use cats for experiments."

and

"What's the idea (referring to the number of cats), you sellin em?"

"Ah no. It's my own idea"

Mixed in with this movie are scenes of random things. A rat, two cats fighting, a bird, a frog, background scenes with devils, a thumping heart in a jar and scientific definitions to explain what's happening to the doctor's assistant. I'm not sure why any of these things are included as they add nothing to the movie.

Some movies are so bad that they are funny, but this movie is just really bad. The only remotely funny scene is where the assistant went to steal another body and when he saw two cats fighting he became terrified and took off running down the street. He's a lot bigger than these two little cats so I'm not sure what he was so scared about.

This movie also included one of the most disturbing scenes that will forever haunt my dreams. The assistant pretending to be the doctor catches a cat and pops out his eyeball and then eats it. I don't think normally this scene would have cause me such terror but knowing that in 1934 there wasn't such thing as CGI, this was actually a real cat. When I researched it later I discovered that it in fact was a real cat who only had one eye. They gave the cat a glass eye before the scene so that's what was popped out. Knowing this doesn't comfort me in the least, instead it creeps me out even more.

Avoid this movie at all costs. Clearly if I sat through this whole movie, I'm the maniac.

Grade: F-

Check back tomorrow for a horror movie review from a 1981 title!