Maniac ** (1963, Kerwin Mathews, Nadia Gray, Donald Houston) – Classic Movie Review 8302

Director Michael Carreras’s 1963 British black and white horror thriller Maniac stars Kerwin Mathews as Jeff Farrell, an American artist tourist drifter in France, who is seduced by tricksy café owner Eve (Nadia Gray) and falls for her teenage step-daughter Annette (Lilianne Brousse).

Jeff agrees to help Eve spring her potty, murderous estranged husband Georges from the asylum where he has been kept for four years since using a blowtorch to kill the man who raped Annette. But Eve has her own agenda and it is Henri (Donald Houston), the guard who is Eve’s lover, who escapes from the asylum.

This overheated, elaborately if mechanically plotted psycho-thriller is rather carelessly made by Hammer Films studio boss Carreras and is uninterestingly acted by a bored-seeming cast, who could have put more effort into it when you consider the plotlines in producer Jimmy Sangster’s good, complex, twisty screenplay.

Maniac can boast some chilling moments and taut scenes, but has few signs of real plausibility, style or flair – and considering its Carmargue setting, has little French atmosphere or visual aplomb. The climactic scenes are set at Les Baux-de-Provence in the huge stone galleries dug into the rock of the Val-d’Enfer on the road to Maillane.

Also in the cast are Justine Lord, George Pastell, Arnold Diamond, Norman Bird, Jerold Wells and Leon Peters.

It was planned back in 1960 with Peter Cushing and George Sanders.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8302

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