Word: maniacal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that other 5% people are most curious about. Arguably the shock genre's best-known title, Psycho earned its place in pop culture for Anthony Perkins' iconic portrayal of Oedipal maniac Norman Bates as well as the art-gore montage of the winsome Janet Leigh being stabbed to death in a shower. For some, the thought of Gen X stars Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche replaying those parts seems like heresy. Not for Van Sant. "[Psycho] is perfect to refashion as a modern piece," he insists. "Reflections are a major theme in the original, with mirrors everywhere, characters who reflect...
...uncovered letters from Capano, as well as a diary chronicling their ups and downs, that their affair was out in the open. In one of her last diary entries, on April 7, 1996, Fahey wrote, "I have finally brought closure to Tom Capano. What a controlling, manipulative, insecure, jealous maniac...
...wants a new speed limit, but doesn't expect it to happen anytime soon. Montanans are not nut-case antigovernment types, he says, a tad sensitive about the militia thing that captured so many headlines. But they want stronger evidence of a link between driving like a maniac and dying like...
...bootleg-booze industry, Hollywood moralizing gave birth to exploitation films. With the adoption of a Production Code in 1922, the major studios ostensibly promised to renounce the ribald. Into that vacuum crept sideshowmen like Dwain Esper, who directed (ludicrously) and promoted (brilliantly) the first grindhouse classics. The 1934 Maniac, about a mad scientist's even daffier assistant whose ailurophobia leads him to rip out a cat's eye and eat it ("Why, it's not unlike an oyster"), pretended to be a serious study of dementia praecox. Esper used the old carny come-on--it's so sinful you have...
...films were often shot in a weekend with untested actors who had to get it right the first time; to producers, the only truly obscene phrase was "Take Two." The running times were as short as a starlet's skirt. A plot-heavy thriller might last 51 minutes (Maniac) or 63 (Herschell Gordon Lewis' gore-gantuan Blood Feast). Then again, the numbing incompetence of some adults-only films made that one hour seem endless. The tone of even the best of them was not so much sexy as seedy. And still the patrons sat there hoping for an epidermal epiphany...