Maniac (1963)
Directed by Michael Carreras

Film Review

In the early 1960s, the popularity of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) ignited a craze for psycho-thrillers which the British film company Hammer exploited for all it was worth as a lucrative sideline to its run of Gothic horror films.  Following Taste of Fear (1961), the studio turned out half a dozen similar 'shock' thrillers, each employing the gimmicky twist ending of H.G. Clouzot's Les Diaboliques (1955) in one form or another.   Maniac is the film in this series where this is most apparent - indeed, so closely does it imitate the plot of Les Diaboliques that it could almost be considered a remake or, less flatteringly, a flagrant rip-off.  Unlike the other psycho-thrillers he would script for Hammer - the best being Paranoiac (1963) and Nightmare (1964) - Jimmy Sangster's reworking of Clouzot's film for Maniac is a little too mechanical.  The end-result is a convoluted narrative that struggles to make any kind of sense, although the film still functions effectively as a classic sting-in-the-tail thriller.

The plot shortcomings aside, Michael Carreras (son of James Carreras, the founder of Hammer Studios) manages to acquit himself in the director's chair, making effective use of the film's location in the Camargue region of southern France to give it a very different feel to Hammer's usual horror output.  Although he was a producer for most of his career, in which capacity he saw Hammer through its most commercially successful years, Carreras did occasionally lend his talents as a director, first on the war film The Steel Bayonet (1957), later on the classic Gothic horror The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964).   No one would ever place Carreras in the same league as Hammer's star directors Terence Fisher or Freddie Francis, who had a natural affinity for the horror genre, but he did have a certain visual flair, and this is most apparent in the spectacular nightmarish conclusion to Maniac.  A magician when it came to using light and shade to create atmosphere, cinematographer Wilkie Cooper contributes much to the aura of menace that almost saturates the film, helped along by an eerie score from Stanley Black.

The film's attractive lead performers include Kerwin Mathews, famous for playing Sinbad in the The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), and sultry Rumanian beauty Nadia Gray, who graced several stylish French and Italian films of the 1960s, including Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960).  With Mathews and Gray monopolising our attention for most of the film's runtime it is easy to overlook French ingénue Liliane Brousse, who only comes into her own in the film's concluding scenes, when she is suddenly projected into the role of the 'girl in peril', without which no psycho-thriller would be complete.  George Pastell brings a touch of gravitas (as well as some dark humour) to the proceedings as a slightly sinister French police inspector - Carreras would put the actor's creepy, mortuary-scented presence to much better use on The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb.

Maniac's contrived plot, too muddled and unconvincing to take seriously, prevents the film from living up to the high standard of Hammer's other psycho-thrillers, although compelling performances from the leads and some striking visuals make this obvious Les Diaboliques imitation just about worth the effort.  And the idea of a deranged killer burning people's faces off with an oxy-acetylene torch is one of the more gruesome ones the studio came up with.  By the mid-60s, horror was starting to get a whole lot nastier...

Film Synopsis

Jeff Farrell, an American artist, is holidaying in the south of France when he strikes up a friendship with provincial bar owner Eve Beynat and her stepdaughter Annette.  Eve's husband Georges is locked away in an asylum, having used a blowtorch to kill the man who raped his daughter four years previously.  In love with Eve, Jeff wants to start a new life with her, but she insists that in the eyes of the law she is still married to Georges.  Eve agrees to elope with Jeff if he assists her in helping Georges to escape from the asylum.  After driving Georges to the coast, where he intends catching a boat to England, Eve and Jeff discover the dead body of an asylum warder in the boot of their car.  Far from being cured of his insanity, it would seem that Georges is as dangerous as ever, and the one thing on his mind is revenge...