Maniac (Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture, Volume 17)

So perverse that it continues to shock and offend viewers 90 years after it's release, Dwain Esper's Maniac is a deranged retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat in the guise of an educational film on mental illness. This no-budget thriller by self-taught filmmakers has a wildly fragmented style. It's intrusive use of title scrolls, stock footage, and gratuitous nudity make it one of the first true underground films (with a gruesome wink at the eyeball-slicing scene of Un chien andalou). Maniac is presented here in a new 4K restoration, from the original camera negative and other 35mm elements preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, and is presented in cooperation with Something Weird and the Sonney Amusement Enterprises Film Collection.

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