Maniac Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Maniac Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman December 22, 2020

Note: Mill Creek has released 'Maniac' as part of a twenty film Hammer Horror collection and shares a disc with The Snorkel. The film was previously released in a two pack with Die! Die! My Darling! (also included in this collection). This disc features identical video and a two-channel lossless soundtrack.

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.

Maniac Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

This Blu-ray release of Maniac features the exact same transfer found on the 2018 Mill Creek release, which itself was identical to the Sony release from the same year. Below is a reproduction of that video review text:

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 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Mill Creek's previous Blu-ray release of Maniac included an LPCM 2.0 uncompressed soundtrack. This Blu-ray features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless presentation, which is the same encode featured on the November 2018 Sony release. This one is practically identical to the two previous issues; there are no major notable audible differences. This one plays with the same ~2.0 Mbps bitrate from the Sony release. It's adequately detailed, somewhat hard-edged to be sure but never excessively hollow or shallow. Music is well served even by the limited channel configuration. Even without an active subwoofer channel, there's a decent sense of low end depth. Stage range is limited. It never stretches fully to the ends but neither is it severely cramped in the middle. That doesn't allow some of the atmospherics, or some key reverb, to fully stretch and envelop the listener, but these effects are not rendered entirely useless, either. They play with fair balance within the limited channel configuration and the film's somewhat dated sound design. Dialogue is clear and images well to the middle.

Maniac Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No extras are included, and neither were there any to be found in the previous release.

Maniac Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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 latest Blu-ray release of Maniac, part of the 20-film Hammer Ultimate Collection, contains the same video transfer as the previous Mill Creek and Sony discs, a two-channel lossless soundtrack that is not a radical departure from the uncompressed two channel outing in the previous Mill Creek issue, and no extras. Recommended.