![](http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k87/Moltars_Magic_Thighs/lj11/11025maniac.jpg)
In the early '60s Hammer Films produced a series of low-budget psychological thrillers, many of which had titles that brought Hitchcock's Psycho to mind. One such film was 1963's The Maniac, which I considered making the middle part of a triple-feature with 1934's Maniac (a notoriously bad exploitation film) and 1980's Maniac (a just plain notorious slasher film) before mercifully nixing that idea. I'm sure my psyche thanks me.
Written and produced by Hammer mainstay Jimmy Sangster and directed by Michael Carreras, The Maniac is set in the Camargue region of southern France (later referenced by Sir Bedevere in Holy Grail), where American painter Kerwin Mathews is left stranded by his spoiled girlfriend and decides to stick around once he gets the lay of the land. This includes chasing after local lass Liliane Brousse and falling into bed/love with her stepmother (Nadia Gray), who fills him in on the status of the girl's father (Donald Houston), who's been locked away in an asylum ever since he took a blowtorch to the man who raped her. Somehow Mathews is convinced that the only way he can be with Gray is to help her break her husband out (I suppose he imagines Houston will be so thankful to be free that he won't mind being cuckolded), which immediately raises the suspicion of police inspector George Pastell -- and that's even before he knows about the welding supplies that have mysteriously shown up at the house. If you ask me, that would be the perfect time for Mathews to question the wisdom of breaking the person responsible for "The Acetylene Killing" out of the nuthouse.