Not to be confused with the 80s slasher movie or that 30s movie where they rip out a cat's eyeball, this is the Hammer studios MANIAC. The movie starts right out with a dad getting some sweet revenge with an acetylene torch after his daughter is attacked(and apparently raped but this is 1960 so this is never made all that crystal clear) by some creep. Unfortunately he takes things too far and is thrown in an asylum and branded a "maniac". Then for a long time it becomes a boring love triangle story between our maniac's wife and his daughter and some American dude. Then it gets weird when the imprisoned maniac's wife convinces her new lover to break her husband out of jail and he agrees to this for some bizarre reason? This part made very little sense to me. It all ends with a few twists and that's nice and all but I think my main problem with this is that the guy who's dubbed a maniac seems pretty justified in his initial revenge. I mean sure you shouldn't torture anyone with a welding torch but the man's daughter was just viciously attacked. Who wouldn't be a tad peeved off over this? Then this American fella comes along and hits on his wife and daughter? This villain doesn't seem all that bad of a guy to me in his initial reaction and on the other hand this American doesn't seem like much of a hero in the story. Hammer would head into mostly more monster and gothic stuff after this and that seems to have been their strong suit and a better idea than trying to do their version of PSYCHO.
On the bottom of a double-bill with a William Castle directed Hammer remake:
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