Maniac Blu-ray Movie

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Maniac Blu-ray Movie United States

Mill Creek Entertainment | 1963 | 86 min | Not rated | No Release Date

Maniac (Blu-ray Movie)

Price

Movie rating

6.3
 / 10

Blu-ray rating

Users0.0 of 50.0
Reviewer2.5 of 52.5
Overall2.5 of 52.5

Overview

Maniac (1963)

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 Pastell
Director: Michael Carreras

Mystery100%
Thriller15%
CrimeInsignificant

Specifications

  • Video

    Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
    Video resolution: 1080p
    Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
    Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1

  • Audio

    English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)

  • Subtitles

    English SDH

  • Discs

    Blu-ray Disc
    Single disc (1 BD)

  • Playback

    Region A (B, C untested)

Review

Rating summary

Movie3.0 of 53.0
Video4.0 of 54.0
Audio3.0 of 53.0
Extras0.0 of 50.0
Overall2.5 of 52.5

Maniac Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman February 7, 2019

Mill Creek has released 'Maniac' on Blu-ray as part of a double feature with 'Die! Die! My Darling!' and is currently the only way to own the film from Mill Creek. Sony released the film in November 2018 as a standalone disc. This featureless disc offers solid video and audio presentations, neither of which are a dramatic departure from the Sony offering.


In the French countryside, a young girl named Anette (Liliane Brousse) is brutally raped. Her assailant is subsequently brutally murdered by her father, Georges. Georges' crime, if one can call a father avenging his daughter's rape a crime, has gained worldwide attention under the title "The Acetylene Murder." It lands him in an asylum for the criminally insane. Four years pass. Anette and her mother Eve (Nadia Gray) operate a small bar into which one day walks an American artist named Jeff Farrell (Kewrin Matthews) who finds himself drawn to Anette. Eve has eyes for him herself, and as his stay extends, he gradually finds himself falling for Eve until the two engage in a fully realized romance. It is not long until Eve reveals her secret, that her husband Georges is serving time in the nearby facility. She convinces Jeff to help her execute a plan to break him out so he can sneak away and the two can more openly, and more fully, explore their feelings for one another with Eve's husband finally out of the picture. But little does Jeff know that he is not being told the entire truth and that his relationship with Eve, and his part in the jailbreak, could cost him dearly.

For a full film review, please click here.


Maniac Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality  4.0 of 5

Maniac's 1080p transfer appears to be, for all intents and purposes, identical to that which Sony released in November 2018. For a full video review, please click here.


Maniac Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality  3.0 of 5

Mill Creek's LPCM 2.0 uncompressed soundtrack for Maniac of course does not dramatically alter or rework the track compared to the Sony release, which was also of a two-channel configuration. Anyone would be hard-pressed to notice any dramatic differences between the two tracks. The Sony disc does play with a steadily higher audio bitrate (around 2.0 Mbps for the Sony disc, 1.5 for the Mill Creek disc). The Mill Creek disc maintains a similar front-center focus for most all effects, never quite reaching out as far as it could. Essential clarity to sound effects, music, and dialogue are fine but nothing noteworthy. The track carries the listener through the film but accomplishes little more.


Maniac Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras  n/a of 5

No supplemental content is included, nor are DVD or digital copies. The Sony disc was nearly as bare-bones, offering only the film's trailer.


Maniac Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation  2.5 of 5

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. Mill Creek's Blu-ray release of Maniac contains essentially the same video transfer as the Sony disc, a two-channel soundtrack that is not a radical departure from Sony's, and no extras. Worth a look, and anyone looking to add this film to their collection would be wise to choose this release; it's cheaper by a bunch than Sony's disc, comes with another movie in the double pack, and offers basically the same A/V quality.


Other editions

Maniac: Other Editions