1930s exploitation, nudity: Devil Monster trailer & Maniac clips

Description :

Rare trailer (albeit incomplete) for the notoriously awful 'Devil Monster' (1946) featuring stock footage of topless South Seas native girls. Originally released in 1935 as 'The Sea Fiend' and 'The Great Manta', the film was re‑edited eleven years later with additional nude scenes and reissued as 'Devil Monster', likely for the adults‑only roadshow circuit. The video also includes clips from 'Maniac' (1934), one of the earliest exploitation films to use nudity, showcasing bizarre horror, over‑acting, and a rape‑in‑progress sequence that escaped censorship. A gratuitous scene of women in skimpy lingerie appears unrelated to the story, while a fantasy transition effect and superimposed scenes from the 1922 silent film 'Witchcraft Through the Ages' illustrate a mad scientist’s insanity. Title cards with clinical descriptions of mental illnesses give the film a pseudo‑scientific documentary feel, allowing it to be screened with all its outrageous content intact. Director Dwain Esper, often called the Ed Wood of the 1930s, also produced exploitation classics such as 'Narcotic' (1933), 'Marihuana' (1936), and 'Sex Madness' (1938), all of which are available in this archive along with the complete 'Maniac' and 'Devil Monster'.