This was one of two Hammer thrillers (even if it was watched on a "Fantasy" day) that had eluded me thus far; for the record, the remaining title – CRESCENDO (1970) – has, controversially, just been released on DVD-R as part of Warners' U.S. exclusive "Archive Collection". While MANIAC has a reasonable reputation, I have to say that I was ultimately let down by it and I would place the film in the lower rank of the studio's efforts in this vein. Its main fault, basically, lies in a not very interesting plot (courtesy, as were many of these outings, of screenwriter Jimmy Sangster): besides, it tries – but fails – to recapture the sense of eeriness inherent in a remote seaside location (in its case, the Camargues) already seen in the much superior TASTE OF FEAR (1961) and THE DAMNED (shot in 1961 but only released 2 years later). That said, characterization is quite well rounded: Kerwin Mathews, infrequently seen in a modern-day setting, makes for a surprisingly effective lead (in fact, he had previously starred in Hammer's splendid adventure film THE PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER [1962]); Nadia Gray is sultry and conniving, Liliane Brousse her ingenue – but no less sexy – stepdaughter (who gets raped in the film's very opening sequence!). Coming into play during the latter stages is Donald Houston as the titular figure, though he proves to be someone other than who the audience had been led to believe; therefore, we have a number of nice twists (and implied violence) here
but, then, end up with a rather ordinary mystery – actually anticipating a number of gialli in this regard! Unfortunately, my enjoyment of the film was further dampened by all kind of technical problems (after the picture in the copy I acquired initially failed to visualize) – with stretched image (fixed by altering the TV setting to 16:9), fuzziness, combing (the latter also causing the audio to drop out a couple of times) and lip-synch issues all rearing their ugly head throughout the viewing!
Review of Maniac
