Maniac
“He menaced women with weird desires!”
Premium Crap. CrapScore 74, rated by 1 admin.
Higher CrapScores mean more entertainingly bad. How we score movies.
A doctor's assistant steals his employer's identity and sends an already dubious experiment into delirium. This short exploitation oddity jumps between lurid incidents and hysterical explanations with very little connective tissue. Its old-fashioned sensationalism is the attraction; animal-cruelty imagery makes it an abrasive watch.
Nominated by @flabbergasted_jones
The club’s verdict
- Acting
- 8/10
- Plot
- 9/10
- Effects
- 5.5/10
- Dialogue
- 8/10
- Rewatchability
- 6.5/10
“The doctor's replacement has misplaced every remaining ethical standard.”
@flabbergasted_jones, scored it 74
Synopsis and movie facts
An ex-vaudeville actor is working as the assistant to a doctor who has Frankenstein aspirations. The ex-vaudeville actor kills the doctor and decides to assume the identity of the dead physician.
- Released
- 1934
- Directed by
- Dwain Esper
- Running time
- 51 min
Starring
- Bill Woods as Don Maxwell
- Horace B. Carpenter as Dr. Meirschultz
- Ted Edwards as Buckley
- Phyllis Diller as Mrs. Buckley
- Theo Ramsey as Alice Maxwell
- Jenny Dark as Maizie
- Marvelle Andre as Marvel
- Celia McCann as Jo
Research behind this pick
Researched . Explore the film references and reviews below.
- Film reference · themoviedb.org
TMDB identity and credits retrieved on 2026-11-10: Maniac (1934), directed by Dwain Esper. The importer rechecks identity, poster, synopsis, release date, runtime, genres and cast against live metadata.
- Review · badmovies.org
The review describes the impostor doctor's unstable behaviour and fragmented lurid incidents; this is Dwain Esper's 1934 film, not either later slasher called Maniac. Full review text retained from earlier catalogue research and consulted again on 2026-11-10; no claim of a fresh page download.
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