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

Description:

#DevilMonster #TheSeaFiend #TheGreatManta #PublicDomainTV Rare trailer (albeit incomplete) for the notoriously awful "Devil Monster" (1946) with stock film of topless South Seas native girls. A Mexican-American co-production released originally in 1935 as "The Sea Fiend" and "The Great Manta". Eleven years later it was re-edited with more nude scenes and reissued as "Devil Monster", most likely for use on the adults-only roadshow circuit. After that are clips from "Maniac" (1934) with perhaps the earliest use of nudity in an exploitation film. An astonishingly bizarre and lurid horror movie with terrible over-acting, nude scenes, and an obvious rape-in-progress sequence (too dark for my mpeg converter) that amazingly escaped censorship. Plus a totally gratuitous scene of floozies in skimpy lingerie that has nothing to do with the story. The last bit shows a nice fantasy transition special effect and superimposed scenes from the 1922 silent film "Witchcraft Through the Ages" to illustrate the mad scientists insanity. The inclusion of numerous title cards with clinical descriptions of mental illnesses gave this film a pseudo-scientific documentary appearance. Thus, the pretense of being an educational film made it possible to screen it, with all its outrageous scenes intact, on the exploitation circuit. Director Dwain Esper was pretty much the Ed Wood of the '30s. He gave the world the exploitation classics "Narcotic" (1933), "Marihuana" (1936), and "Sex Madness" (1938) -- the latter two also have nude scenes and are available in this archive along with the complete "Maniac" and "Devil Monster".