SincereFinest disgusting, overrated, pointless

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Stevieboy666 Despite being a life long horror fan I have only recently come across this movie from 1934. The plot, if you can make sense of it, involves a mad doctor who wants to bring the dead back to life, but also throws in some Edgar Allan Poe, in particular his "The Black Cat". Bare breasted women, sexual assault, animals fighting plus an eye gouging & eating scene makes this an early exploitation movie. Perhaps worth seeing as a curiosity but a truly awful film, the animals are probably better actors than the humans!

dougdoepke The movie must have done something right to get 70 reviews. What it did right was to get everything wrong in terms of filmmaking craft. In short, the results are hilariously bad. There's more ham in the acting than at Farmer John's; the editing must have been done in a darkroom; the script pasted together in that same darkroom; while Esper likely laughed all the way to the proverbial bank. Yes, this is exploitation movie-making from the 30's, replete with snatches of nude girls and textbook psychology thrown in, the latter no doubt cover for the former. Good thing I covered my cat's eyes while we were watching. Likely, Esper's on PETA's all-time list of cat-throwing villains. Yes indeed, movie-making doesn't come more mangled than this. Unless, of course, it's one of those A-list snoozers that Liz and Richard used to make. Meanwhile, I'm hoping to find Maniac's sequel, maybe something like "Maniac Goes to Congress". It's probably buried in the Golden Turkey archives awaiting re-discovery.(In passing—the movie's Phyllis Diller, b.1897, is not the same person as the comedienne Phyllis Diller, b.1917.)

Dan Franzen (dfranzen70) This is one of those cheapie "horror" movies that can be good for a few laughs, but nothing more. It's another Frankenstein-esque plot, with stereotypical mad scientist Dr. Meirschultz (Horace B. Carpenter) claiming to be able to revive recently dead folks with a mere injection. Yes, no more of waiting for a huge thunderstorm to get enough electricity to jolt a corpse! Just one hypo is all you need.The good doctor is assisted by a former vaudevillian named Don Maxwell (William Woods) who does impressions. Not of famous people, mind you, but of people like the guards at a mortuary – the better for the duo to sneak in an snag themselves a body. They grab an alluring young woman who just committed suicide and revive her, but the woman spends most of the rest of the movie offscreen, for some reason.Maxwell, who's also on the lam from the cops, decides to impersonate the doctor and take over the experiments, at which point wacky hijinks ensue. At least I assume they did, given the poor lighting and unintelligible voices.Interestingly enough, there's brief nudity. This would be before the infamous Hays Code that prohibited just about everything – at least until the sixties or so.Maniac, also known as Sex Maniac, isn't worth your time. Also, if spot the name "Phyllis Diller" in the cast, rest assured that it's not that Phyllis Diller.

Joseph Brando I'm not sure how anyone who would invest the time to watch a movie like this would dislike Maniac. It isn't scary, but really are any of these black and white antique horror movies? What these classics do have that today's horror film's do not are a great sense of atmosphere - and Maniac does have that. It also has some shocking scenes that you won't find in any of the Universal classics. Some people complain that the actors are overacting, but I find that to be the case in almost all of these old films, unlike today's horror movies which boast plenty of under-acting, I find the former much more enjoyable than the latter. At 51 minutes, the story moves along a very quick pace with plenty of twists, turns, shocks, and odd characters to keep you interested. I think all horror movies should take a tip from Maniac and keep the running time to around an hour long as they always seem to get retarded during the final third.