Maniac

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.