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EducationalMANIAC (Forbidden Fruit: The 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 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.
- 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)
- Dwain Esper - Director
- Bill Woods - Actor
- Horace Carpenter - Actor
- Ted Edwards - Actor
- Phyllis Diller - Actor
- Thea Ramsey - Actor
- Jenny Dark - Actor
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