Maniac (Forbidden Fruit: Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture Vol. 17) (Blu-ray)

So perverse that it continues to shock and offend viewers 90 years after its 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. 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 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. Four true crime short films by Dwain Esper and Louis Sonney: You Can't Beat the Rap, The Last Hour of Killer Mears, The March of Crime, and The March of Crime (2nd Ed.) | Audio interview with Dwain Esper and Hildagarde Stadie (1982) courtesy of Mark Woods, Jr. | Audio commentary by Bret Wood (1999), author of Marihuana, Motherhood & Madness | Original theatrical trailer | 2024 Re-release trailer | Trailers for Dwain Esper's Narcotic (1933) and Marihuana: Weed With Roots in Hell (1936)