6.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
An American painter has an affair with a bar owner in a French village and agrees to help her murderer husband escape from a prison for the criminally insane.
Starring: Kerwin Mathews, Nadia Gray (I), Donald Houston, Liliane Brousse, George PastellMystery | 100% |
Thriller | 15% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Maniac is set in “The Camargue,” an area in Southern France known for its wildlife and perpetual violence. But the setting is of little importance. This vintage Hammer Horror feature tells a slow-burn and highly combustible story of murder, forbidden romances, and double crosses, typical genre fodder that is not much improved upon here. The film elevates to modest heights and finds simple thrills in its twisty-turny tale of misdeeds and misleads and surprise reveals that rewrite the story as the truth comes to light. Directed by Michael Carreras, son of Hammer co-founder James Carreras, and Written by Jimmy Sangster, who penned several screenplays for Hammer including The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula, craft a competent picture, one that is well acted and appropriately paced, refusing to overstay its welcome with a curt runtime that allows the story just enough time to establish, develop, and reveal without much wasted, superfluous screen time.
Maniac's 1080p Bu-ray is another nice catalogue release from Sony. The native film-sourced photography maintains an extremely fine grain structure that lends to the picture a beautifully filmic texture. Details are very crisp and naturally sharp, presenting the beautiful French countryside with striking clarity and razor definition, whether paved roads, trees, or automobiles. Rich textures around town are the norm while character details such as skin and clothes rarely disappoint. The grayscale is nicely graded with appropriately deep blacks and balanced brighter highlights. There is some slight flickering at times, a few stray vertical lines, and a generally light infestation of print scratches and pops that do not interfere with every scene. The image is otherwise in very good shape and fans should be delighted with Sony's presentation.
Maniac features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack. The musical elements, notably the opening title theme, do not play with perfect clarity. There's an obvious muddiness to it and a hard-edged scratchiness that together don't allow for a perfectly rich, detailed presentation. Music additionally favors the middle portion of the stage, never seeming to stretch as far as the front-side stage will allow. Music plays well enough against barroom din in chapter two, and the two channel track makes an honest attempt to create a sense of place and draw the listener into the environment. A nice little feel of location reverberation in the climactic sequence stands as amongst the most prominent and enjoyable sonic moments in the film while additional, and infrequent, effects beyond basics like footfalls are handled with sufficient clarity. Dialogue rightly finds a middle location and does not struggle with clarity or prioritization.
Maniac's Blu-ray release contains only the film's theatrical trailer (1080p, 2:28). No DVD or digital copies are included, and this release does not ship with a slipcover.
Maniac does not rise to the level of distinguished cinema, but audiences should find it an agreeably paced and suitably mysterious time waster in the spirit of so many otherwise campy films that aim to play it straight down the middle. Little about the movie proves the least bit memorable beyond Houston's work in the third act, yet it's strangely alluring thanks to a legitimate shroud of mystery, a few good performances, tight pacing, and nicely composed framing and photography courtesy of DP Wilkie Cooper. Sony's Blu-ray release of Maniac offers no special features beyond a trailer. Video is generally strong and audio presents the largely uninteresting sound design well enough. Worth a look, but don't forget that Mill Creek released the film as part of a double feature earlier this year which includes another movie and currently costs less than half of what Sony is asking for this.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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