Directed by: Dwain Esper
Written by: Hildagarde Stadie
Starring: Bill Woods, Horace B. Carpenter, Ted Edwards, Phyllis Diller, Thea Ramsey, Jenny Dark, Marvelle Andre, Celia McCann, John P. Wade

STORY
Don Maxwell used to be a vaudeville performer.
Now he has found a slightly less conventional occupation.
He works for a mad scientist.
Dr. Meirschultz is conducting experiments designed to accomplish something scientists have been dreaming about for centuries:
Bringing the dead back to life.
And apparently nobody involved has considered that this might be a TERRIBLE idea.
Meirschultz works among corpses, chemicals and medical equipment, attempting to discover the secret of restoring life after death.
Don assists him.
At least for a while.
Eventually Meirschultz decides that what his experiments really need is another fresh corpse and orders Don to kill himself so that the doctor can continue his research.
Don has a different idea.
He shoots Meirschultz instead.
Now Don Maxwell has a dead mad scientist on his hands.
Fortunately, Don has one particular talent that might help him escape the consequences.
He is an impersonator.
So Don puts his old vaudeville skills to work and assumes the identity of the dead Dr. Meirschultz.
Unfortunately, pretending to be a mad scientist begins to have an unexpected effect.
Don starts becoming one.
His grip on reality deteriorates as he continues Meirschultz’s bizarre work, encounters patients with serious psychological disturbances and desperately attempts to prevent anyone from discovering the real doctor’s body.
One patient, Buckley, receives an injection that sends him into a violent frenzy.
Buckley’s wife becomes suspicious.
Don’s estranged wife Alice reappears.
And a peculiar neighbor surrounded by cats becomes another potential threat to Don’s increasingly fragile secret.
Meanwhile, the body of Dr. Meirschultz still needs to disappear.
Don walls the corpse up inside the house.
But there is something else behind that wall.
A cat.
And anyone familiar with Edgar Allan Poe probably knows that hiding a murdered man behind a wall with a cat nearby is unlikely to end well.
What follows is approximately fifty minutes of mad science, murder, insanity, corpses, cats, medical experiments, hallucinations and filmmaking so completely uninhibited that MANIAC has become one of the great curiosities of 1930s exploitation cinema.
This is not Universal Studios Gothic horror.
This is not Dracula elegantly descending a staircase.
This is Dwain Esper.
And things are about to get WEIRD.
AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS
THIS IS EDGAR ALLAN POE... SORT OF
Maniac was written by Hildagarde Stadie and incorporates elements of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat.”
It also contains references to Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” AFI Catalog
The connection becomes particularly obvious when Don conceals Dr. Meirschultz’s corpse behind a wall.
And then a cat threatens to reveal everything.
Poe fans know where this is going.
THE DIRECTOR WAS DWAIN ESPER
Dwain Esper occupied one of the strangest corners of early independent filmmaking.
Rather than working within the traditional Hollywood studio system, Esper became associated with exploitation pictures that could be taken directly to audiences through the roadshow circuit.
Maniac was produced through Roadshow Attractions, and Esper served as both director and producer. AFI Catalog
Independent filmmaking existed LONG before anybody started calling it indie filmmaking.
AIN approves.
HIS WIFE WROTE IT
The screenplay was written by Hildagarde Stadie, Dwain Esper’s wife.
The filmmaking partnership continued on other exploitation pictures, including the wonderfully titled Marihuana in 1936. Wikipedia
Apparently some couples played bridge.
The Espers made exploitation movies.
IT WAS ALSO CALLED SEX MANIAC
If Maniac was not sufficiently attention-grabbing, the picture was later promoted under another title:
SEX MANIAC.
The alternate title is documented by the American Film Institute. AFI Catalog
Subtlety was apparently not part of the marketing campaign.
IT PRETENDED TO BE EDUCATIONAL
Here is where things get especially interesting.
Maniac includes title cards describing various psychiatric conditions.
The American Film Institute notes that the picture contains a lengthy foreword and several cards describing mental conditions and connecting them with criminal behavior. AFI Catalog
That gave the movie a veneer of education while audiences were actually being sold mad scientists, corpses, violence, nudity and insanity.
Educational.
Of course.
THE MENTAL-ILLNESS CARDS ARE A TIME CAPSULE
Among the conditions identified in the film are period terms including “Dementia Praecox,” “Paranoiac,” “Manic-depressive Psychoses” and “Manias.” IMDb
The terminology and the film’s treatment of mental illness reflect the 1930s, not modern medical understanding.
Today those cards make the picture an unusual cultural artifact as well as a horror film.
BILL WOODS WAS A ONE-MOVIE LEADING MAN
Bill Woods plays Don Maxwell.
And according to surviving film records, Maniac was his only acting film.
He later worked as a makeup artist in film and television. Wikipedia
One movie.
And he chose THIS one.
That is certainly one way to make an entrance.
NO, THAT IS NOT THAT PHYLLIS DILLER
There is a performer credited as Phyllis Diller playing Mrs. Buckley.
But before anyone gets excited...
No.
It is not the famous comedian Phyllis Diller.
The actress appearing in Maniac was a different performer with the same name. Wikipedia
HORACE B. CARPENTER HAD BEEN AROUND SINCE THE SILENT ERA
Horace B. Carpenter, who plays the gloriously unhinged Dr. Meirschultz, had a career reaching back into silent cinema.
By the sound era he frequently appeared as older, white-haired characters, particularly in Westerns. Wikipedia
Then Dwain Esper gave him a laboratory and told him to start resurrecting corpses.
Career diversification.
SOME OF THE CAST REMAINS A MYSTERY
Several performers in Maniac were never conclusively identified.
Among them are actors playing some of the movie’s smaller but memorable characters. IMDb
Nearly a century later, portions of the cast remain anonymous.
That makes Maniac a genuine surviving artifact from an era of independent filmmaking when production records were not always preserved.
THERE IS A LOT OF CAT BUSINESS
We need to discuss the cats.
One of Don’s neighbors keeps an extraordinary collection of them.
The cat material eventually becomes integral to the Poe-inspired ending.
But there may be an even stranger story behind what appears on screen.
Film historian Bret Wood has argued that the backyard cat operation seen in the picture may actually have been a real illegal cat farm in suburban Los Angeles rather than a purpose-built movie set. IMDb
Only in independent filmmaking do you potentially solve a production-design problem by saying:
“Anybody know a guy with a backyard full of cats?”
AND YES, THERE IS THAT CAT SCENE
Maniac contains one particularly notorious sequence involving a cat’s eye.
It has helped make the movie infamous among cult-film audiences.
According to production trivia, the cat used for the shot already had one eye, and a glass eye was placed in the empty socket for the effect. IMDb
It is bizarre.
It is grotesque.
And once seen, it is extremely difficult to forget.
THE MOVIE WAS CHEAP
Sources place the production budget in the neighborhood of only several thousand dollars, with one historical estimate putting it at approximately $7,500. Wikipedia
There were no giant studio resources behind Maniac.
This was low-budget independent filmmaking in its rawest form.
And more than ninety years later...
We are still talking about it.
IT WAS SHOT IN LOS ANGELES
Production records identify Los Angeles, California as the filming location. IMDb
That puts this bizarre little independent production right alongside the Hollywood dream factory geographically, if certainly not financially.
While the studios were manufacturing glamorous stars and prestige pictures...
Dwain Esper was making Maniac.
AINTOID: THE MOVIE IS PURE EXPLOITATION CINEMA
Maniac belongs to an era when independent roadshow filmmakers could attract audiences by promising material the major studios generally would not touch.
Sex.
Crime.
Drugs.
Madness.
Medical horrors.
Anything that could be sold as forbidden, shocking or educational was fair game.
Esper knew exactly what kind of movie he was making.
He wanted people curious enough to buy a ticket.
Nearly a century later, that same curiosity still works.
AINTOID: IT IS HORROR WITHOUT A SAFETY NET
There is something fascinating about Maniac precisely because it does not behave like a polished studio horror film.
Scenes collide.
Performances become enormous.
Medical terminology appears on title cards.
Poe wanders into the story.
Corpses come back to life.
Cats appear.
People scream.
People hallucinate.
And Don Maxwell descends farther and farther into madness.
There is very little restraint.
There is even less subtlety.
And THAT is exactly why the movie survives as a cult curiosity.
AINTOID: INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING, 1934 STYLE
Long before digital cameras.
Long before streaming.
Long before Sundance.
Long before anyone could upload a movie from a laptop...
Filmmakers outside the major studio system were finding ways to make movies, distribute them and get them in front of audiences.
Maniac is part of that history.
It is rough.
It is strange.
It is sometimes completely bonkers.
But somebody financed it.
Somebody shot it.
Somebody distributed it.
Audiences saw it.
And ninety-two years later, AIN can introduce it to another generation.
Now THAT is indie film history.