Maniac (1934)

[Andrew]

An insane man kills a mad scientist, assumes his identity, and proceeds to cause mayhem among the doctor's patients and acquaintances.  Case in point:  Mr. Buckley, who develops a case of the screaming meemies.  As in, "Dear God, I want to get naked and strangle a manatee for mother!  MOTHER!"

Click here to go to the Review

[JMR3000]

Wait, a madman kills a mad scientist, then takes his place?  What madness!  I guess, when the madman is the scientist's assistant and he is a master of disguise, this is reasonably plausible.

Mad scientists, mad non-scientists, people made mad with syringes, reanimated corpses...where will it all end??

Thanks, Andrew, for a top-notch review of an insane movie.

[Circus Circus]

You can tune a guitar, you can tuna fish, but you cannot tune a man who thinks he is a guitar-playing fish.

  So true...

Great review Andrew! 

[Trekgeezer]

I started a thread on this quite a while back. It is one doozy of a movie.  By the way Andrew you didn't mention that Phyllis Diller plays Mrs. Buckley.

http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,103012.0.html

[Rev. Powell]

This is an insane classic that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with PLAN 9.  Esper definitely gave the 1930s audiences what they wanted, scenes they couldn't see in mainstream Hollywood flicks... orangutan men abducting topless women, a guy eating a cat's eyeball...

[C Peter]

Yes, Phyllis Diller plays the Buckley woman, but not THAT Phyllis Diller.

What realy hot me was the coroner's assistant's assistqant, who is clearly drunk or high and is directly reading his lines form the cue cards.

I would swear they had written thewhole movie with lugopsi in the part of the old doctor; the actor even seems to be imitating Bela--badly.  Maybe they wanted Dwight Frye for the asistant as well; he certainly seems Renfieldesque.