Word: maniacs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...must tell President Muffley what Ripper "went and did." Scott's lines are outrageously funny, but the "Strangelove" script gives him little lee-way to improvise. About half-way through the picture, farce submerges all the intricacy Scott has infused into Turgidson. The character ends a near raving maniac, reflecting the general entropy that is engulfing the War Room...
...rough-textured dialogue is delivered by a cast of pros. "You're a sex maniac," purrs Edie Adams laconically, as McQueen ogles her thigh. His approach varies little, for it needs no improvement. Later, getting a clear fix on Natalie's decolletage, he makes a pass in the offhand manner of a man who takes his love the way most people take after-dinner mints. But Actress Wood matches McQueen quip for quip, twitch for twitch, shrug for shrug, smile for winning smile. Both coruscate with the sparkly stuff of which movie stars are made, and their final...
Dead-End Streets. Oswald was no raving maniac. Various neighbors, past and present, described him as seeming reasonably intelligent, although generally silent to the point of acting contemptuous. "We finally quit saying good morning to him," said one, "because he would never answer." Said another: "He treated us like we were garbage." More than anything else, Oswald's life was one of heading almost masochistically down dead-end streets...
...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...
...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...