Cinema: A White-Hot Plot

Maniac is a lethal little thriller that succeeds in spite of itself. The acting and direction are soso, and the character motivations cloudy. But the picture has an ingenious, neatly reticulated plot that packs some walloping surprises. An acetylene torch is the deadly weapon that keeps suspense sizzling.

In a creepy prologue, the terrors to come are capsuled in a roadside cafe owner’s blazing vengeance on a rapist who attacks his daughter, lovely Liliane Brousse. For this, the father is adjudged insane and sent to an asylum. Four years later, itinerant Artist Kerwin Mathews happens along, promptly falls in love with Wife-Stepmother Nadia Gray and agrees to help her husband escape. What happens next? Just about everything, most of it unexpected, non-formula, and deftly contrived to lead the audience into a maze of wrong assumptions.

Maniac is good clean sadism that seldom falters until the final frames, when the fun is diluted in a 3.2 Hitchcock solution. A chase through an underground quarry might have worked out fine for Alfred, but this shock show scores highest when it is being its unpredictable self.