Maniac
Maniac is a 1934 film from the USA, directed by Dwain Esper, running 51 minutes. reelscum files it under classical exploitation.
- Year
- 1934
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 51 min
- Director
- Dwain Esper
- Updated
- 10 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (54/100)
- Also known as
- Sex Maniac
Defined in the glossary: Classical exploitation
Dwain Esper's roadshow lunacy. A man eats a cat's eye. Not the 1980 film.
Dwain Esper's roadshow lunacy, one of the strangest films of the classical exploitation era. A vaudeville impersonator murders a mad scientist, assumes his identity, and descends into raving insanity, in a plot that mostly exists to justify padding, stolen footage and a notorious scene of a man eating a cat's eye. It was sold under the pretext of educating audiences about mental illness.
It is incoherent, a patchwork of sensation and fake medical text-cards, and it survives as one of the purest examples of the roadshow racket: filth dressed as instruction.
A bewildering artifact of exploitation's earliest days.
Trailer
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Where to watch
Legal options in USA
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The cycle in depth
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What a grindhouse is: a continuous-performance theatre, the 1925 trade term behind the word, and how the programming got its reputation.
- The B movie and the double bill it was made for
A B movie is what an exhibitor took to get the A picture, a flat-rate second feature, and the 1948 Paramount ruling ended the arrangement.
Filed alongside
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Blood Feast
The first gore film. Barely competent, historically unavoidable.
Reefer Madness
A church-funded warning that became a comedy 40 years later.
White Zombie
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Häxan
A 1922 documentary about witchcraft that is also a horror film. Way ahead of itself.
Freaks
Killed Browning's career, banned in Britain for thirty years. Still unclassifiable.