Horror 2025 Countdown: Maniac (1934)

 Maniac (1934) dir. Dwain Esper, Roadshow Attractions

 

As we've done in the past, this section of the month will be focusing on a particular theme. In this case that theme is zombies and brother, what a pick today. 

The man behind this glorious piece of celluloid insanity was the same mind behind:

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When you think the 1930's, you think some level of old fashioned morality (Hayes Code, etc.) but Esper managed to skip all that by playing the grindhouse circuit. He would argue his films WERE moral. He had to show the bad stuff in order to condemn it, right?

Our tale of morality begins with Dr. Meirschultz (Horace Carpenter), who is about as mad as a mad scientist can get. His assistant is former actor Don Maxwell (Bill Woods), who is more or less forced to work with the doc for reasons never explained. Maxwell's acting ability helps them when the doc needs to spirit away corpses from the local morgue. He simply pretends to be a local doctor and away we go. 

The doc's field of study is resurrection. He is convinced he can bring the dead back to life. His latest subject is a limited success. She's walking around but that's about it. She resembles a zombie in everything but name. 

The next thing he's working on is an artificial heart. His suggestion is perfectly reasonable-all Maxwell has to do is shoot himself in the heart and the doc will pop in the new one, for science!

Maxwell has a counter argument: No. He also backs this up by shooting the mad doc and burying the corpse behind a wall in the lab.

All Maxwell has to do is get out of town now, right? Well, the late Meirschultz was officially a psychiatrist and wouldn't you know it, every last one of his patients is coming to the office that very day. Maxwell dons a disguise and uses his UNHOLY ACTING TALENT to convince the increasing neurotic folks that he simply can't seem them right now. 

This doesn't placate the Buckleys, however, and Mister Buckey (Ted Edwards) wants his treatment-NOW. Maxwell grabs a handy syringe and pops in. Pity he didn't read the label because instead of a placebo he used 'super-adrenaline'. The ends result is not pretty but also involves a shocking amount of nudity for a 1934 film. 

Shocking is a word for sure. The rest of the film follows Edgar Allan Poe's "the Black Cat" closer than Universal's take that came out that same year. Utterly mad, tasteless and yet there is a seed of genius. Where would Lloyd Kaufman be walking in Esper hadn't crawled?