So perverse that it continues to shock and offend viewers 90 years after its release, Dwain Esper’s Maniac is a deranged retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” in the guise of an educational film on mental illness. This no-budget thriller by self-taught filmmakers has a wildly fragmented style. Its intrusive use of title scrolls, stock footage, and gratuitous nudity make it one of the first true underground films (with a gruesome wink at the eyeball-slicing scene of Un chien andalou). Maniac is presented here in a new 4K restoration, from the original camera negative and other 35mm elements preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, and is presented in cooperation with Something Weird and the Sonney Amusement Enterprises Film Collection.
Product Extras:
Audio interview with director Dwain Esper and screenwriter Hildagarde Esper
The true crime short films of Dwain Esper and Louis Sonney: You Can't Beat the Rap, The Last Hour of Killer Mears, The March of Crime, and The March of Crime (2nd Ed.)
Audio commentary by Bret Wood, author of Marihuana, Motherhood, and Madness: Three Screenplays from the Exploitation Cinema of Dwain Esper
Original theatrical trailer
2024 Re-release trailer
Trailers for Dwain Esper's The Seventh Commandment, Narcotic, and Marihuana: Weed With Roots in Hell
1999
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