A Dreary September Night at the Movies!

Autumn chill is finally gathering around us, and it's a dank, drizzly night as we gather at our usual restaurant for a meal and conversation before the show. Many discuss plans for October...after all, it's always a busy month for us! There's always parties and shows and movies and whatnot, and September is a time to gather one's energy for the flurry of October and the frenzy of Halloween, and then the long slide into the winter holiday season...

Our bill paid, and a bit of the flavor of the pear crisp we all had for dessert lingering pleasantly in our memories, we head up the street to that old movie theater we also go to. The guy taking the tickets has a new piercing, it seems, and is always glad to see us. Maybe. But we still have a good time.

Tonight's show is the notorious 1934 trash classic MANIAC!



This is, without a doubt, the sleaziest film I've featured on this blog. Producer/director Dwain Esper was a schlockmeister and huckster, who loved to make sleazy shock films and cloak them in a veil of feigned morality. This flick pretends to have class credentials, pretending to be based on three different Poe stories ("The Black Cat," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and "The Tell-Tale Heart") but really it just does whatever it can to shock. Plot threads are left dangling, bizarre things happen...you won't believe your eyes.

The movie over, we stagger out, laughing in disbelief at what we've seen, and make our way up the street to that little cafe to dissect what we've seen and argue over its meaning....if it ever had any to begin with...