MANIAC 4K BLU-RAY

Kino Classics + Something Weird Present Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture Volume 17 - MANIAC!

True and Authentic! Nothing Withheld! ! So perverse that it continues to shock and offend viewers ninety years after its release, Dwain Esper's Maniac (1934) 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. Its 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 and Television Archive and the Library of Congress, and are presented in cooperation with Something Weird who is the custodian of the Sonney Amusement Enterprises Film Collection.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Audio Interview with Dwain Esper and Hildagarde Stadie (1982), courtesy of Mark Woods Jr.
• Audio Commentary by Bret Wood (1999), author of Marihuana, Motherhood and Madness: Three Screenplays from the Exploitation Cinema of Dwain Esper
• True Crime Short Subjects of Dwain Esper and Louis Sonney: You Can't Beat the Rap, The Last Hour of Killer Mears, The March of Crime, The March of Crime (2nd Edition)
• Original Theatrical Trailer
• 2024 Re-Release Trailer
• Trailers for Dwain Esper's The Seventh Commandment (1932), Narcotic (1933), and Marihuana: Weed With Roots in Hell (1936)