Maniac (1934) - Dwain Esper

Oh! Stealing through my body! Creeping through my veins! Pouring in my blood! Oh, darts of fire in my brain! Stabbing me! I can’t stand it! I won’t!

The year after the wild and woolly movie that was Narcotic, director Dwain Esper and writer Hildegard Stadie reteamed for another exploitation film, Maniac, and they managed to shave 6 minutes off this one’s running time. Whereas Narcotic clocked it at a lean and mean 57 minutes, this one manages to bring off its tale of mad scientists, violence, lust, drugs, sexuality and . . . illegal cat breeding (?) off in just 51 minutes. Yes, I said illegal cat . . . look, I’ll get to that in a minute.

In this one, Stadie puts her spin on the old Poe story The Black Cat as only she and Esper could. But that’s hardly the only thing they crib from. You’ve got a mad scientist who is obsessed with reanimating dead corpses for one thing. His assistant is an old vaudeville performer who is incredibly gifted with impressions. When the mad scientist has trouble finding a body to experiment on, he decides to just off his assistant, but when the assistant gets the upper hand, it’s the scientist that ends up dead. In a bid to cover his trail, the old vaudevillian begins impersonating the mad scientist, but unfortunately he’s not much of a doctor really, which leads to . . . shall we say malpractice? And then there’s a whole thing with some blackmail and a kidnapping and a rape (!!). If you think that the creepy morgue attendants have been up to some stuff, well, at least it’s only implied. And, as previously mentioned, the guy next door is running an illegal cat-breeding racket. I read that some people speculate that there just happened to actually be an illegal cat-breeding racket next to the filming location, so Esper, never one to miss an oddity, just stuck it into the movie. I don’t know if that’s true, but it makes about as much sense as anything else.

For my money, this one doesn’t measure up to Narcotic. It’s not as genuinely shocking, nor is it as entertainingly crazy. This isn’t to say that it is at all a “normal” movie. It is surreal and dreamlike in some ways. And it is very weird to be watching a movie that is just very clearly from the 1930s and then all of a sudden there are bare breasts being exposed. The best, most shocking scene is when a man strangles a cat until its eye pops out and then the man eats the eye. Fear not, the animal actually wasn’t harmed. The scene was executed by finding a one-eyed cat and putting a glass eye in the animal’s open socket. That’s just great practical effects and it looks really cool. And Ted Edwards in particular is an absolute hoot whenever he’s on screen as a mild-mannered patient driven mad when the vaudevillian accidentally gives him the wrong injection.

So, it’s definitely an entertaining movie and, at only 51 minutes, it’s a fast-paced and weird ride. In a straight contest, I’d take Narcotic, but Esper and Stadie are still operating in the realm of the weird and crazy here and Maniac more than earns its name. 3 ½ out of 4 stars.

tl;dr – wild exploitation movie is a rowdy romp through a tale of murder, drugs, sex and it even gets to say it’s a Poe adaptation; not as good as Esper’s Narcotic, but plenty crazy. 3 ½ stars.

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Narcotic (1933) - Dwain Esper, Vival Sodar't

The marihuana cigarettes are mine!

Well, don’t smoke too many . . . or you might get The Ding!

This raucous, weird and very entertaining exploitation film clocks in at a lean 57 minutes, not even a full hour. In that time, we are introduced to upstanding medical student William Davis (or Davies, continuity not being one of this movie’s preoccupations) and then, thanks to the demon of Opium, he falls prey to a life of wanton hedonism and is then, in pretty short order (like I said, it’s only 57 minutes), driven into depravity, madness, financial ruin and, ultimately, yes, death by suicide.  

Now this movie is Pre-Code, of course, but it’s also quite a bit beyond that. It’s beyond even lighter exploitation fare like the always popular Reefer Madness. A couple of examples might be instructive. As the movie kind of starts to get going, it wants to make sure we understand just how upstanding and competent a doctor our main character is. What better way to do that than by, less than five minutes into the movie, just smash cutting us into graphic stock footage of a Caesarean Section? Back in the day, before the Internet, this was how you gave people cheap thrills. It’s pure shock value and very trashy, but it still kinda lands, especially when you don’t know it’s coming. For another example, Dwain Esper had gotten ahold of the corpse of Elmer McCurdy, an Oklahoma based bank robber and he used said corpse in this movie to stand in for a drug addict’s corpse. He also toted around McCurdy’s mummified remains when he took his movies out on the road and used it for advertising. So, yeah, this movie has AN ACTUAL CORPSE used for set dressing. If you’re looking for real exploitation filmmaking, look no further than Dwain Esper who, by God, will make you walk by a literal corpse if you want a ticket to his movie.

At this point, some of the more morally squeamish members of the audience are free to politely head for the exits and I don’t exactly blame them. When does exploitation cross the line into actual immorality? I’ve never really thought about whether or not graverobbing is where I’d draw that line, but it seems like a pretty good place. But, if you stick around for the movie, you will get a lot of weird, WTF entertainment and quite a few laughs. There’s a hilariously funny “cocaine party” at one point. There’s also a scene where one of our characters ventures down into a sort of red light district. One of the sex workers absolutely brought the house down in my viewing when she drawled, in the most tawdry and unsettling way the words have ever been spoken, “Come on over . . . I’ll DO YOUR LAAAAUUUUUNDRY.” Genuinely disturbing.

Is this movie for you? You probably know by now. And, just in case it makes you feel any better, the dear departed Elmer McCurdy was finally decently laid to rest in Guthrie, Oklahoma, after an astounding 66 years being displayed at carnivals, side shows and in the occasional exploitation movie. RIP, Elmer. We’ll always have . . . this movie? I guess. 3 ½ out of 4 stars.

tl;dr – wacky exploitation movie remains weird, genuinely shocking and raucously entertaining as it details the perils of drug use; not just another typical Pre-Code movie. 3 ½ stars.  

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