The Private Life of a Cat, Alexander Hammid, 1944, digital projection, 29 mins
Maniac, Dwain Esper, 1934, 16mm, 51 mins

Tuesday, January 27, 2026 at 7pm
Light Industry, 361 Stagg Street, Suite 407, Brooklyn

Frequently ranked as the “worst movie of all time” by gibbering fools who understand nothing about true art, Dwain Esper’s Maniac (a.k.a. Sex Maniac) remains essential viewing, not only as a shocking peep into a squalid corner of independent film history, but also for the quasi-lysergic spell that this unrelentingly ramshackle creation casts over any moviegoer strong enough to survive it. Esper was a WWI veteran and self-trained filmmaker who, along with his wife, screenwriter Hildegarde Stadie, produced a string of no-budget exploitation pictures in the 1930s and 40s, with titles like Narcotic; Marihuana, the Weed with Roots in Hell!; and The Love Life of Adolph Hitler. The pair “roadshowed” their self-funded movies around the country, skirting the Hollywood monopolists and their self-imposed morality codes, luring the curious into adults-only events held in small theaters (or tents!) festooned with elaborate displays promising skin and scandal. “The Hays Office—they hated us,” Stadie reported. “You see, they couldn’t stop us and that made them awful mad.”

Deranged even by the Espers’ own standards, Maniac tells the story of mad scientist Dr. Meirschultz (Horace B. Carpenter) and vaudeville impersonator Don Maxwell (Bill Woods) who work together to steal and reanimate a female corpse. This initial crime leads to several confusing and violent scenes, featuring a rampaging mental patient who thinks he is an orangutan, a syringe fight between two crazed women trapped in the lab’s cellar, and demonic visions lifted from Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 witchcraft study Häxan. Unsurprisingly, the New York State censorship board denounced it as “inhuman” and “immoral,” claiming it “will tend to incite crime.” With bits inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s tales, larded with gratuitous offerings of gore and nudity, Maniac is a film whose narrative experience is organized primarily around its disjunctions and non-sequiturs, its threadbare fictions at times ripping open to reveal glimpses of a sordid, all-too-American reality.

Maniac is paired tonight with The Private Life of a Cat, a humble classic by Alexander Hammid that provides a gentle counterpoint. Hammid made the film with his partner Maya Deren, who narrates. It was shot in their West Village apartment and stars their cat Glamour Girl, whom we find preparing for her fourth litter of kittens, then caring for them once born. Private Life enjoyed a degree of success unusual for a movie of its kind, and proved to be one of the most popular films screened at Cinema 16. “This sensitive, poetic documentary by distinguished film directors—humorous and tender in turn—explores love, birth, and growth in a cat family, offering inevitable analogies with humans,” wrote Amos Vogel. “Banned in 1948 by the New York State censors as ‘indecent’ because of its moving birth sequences, it is also the perfect sex education film for children. Especially noteworthy for its unstaged and hilarious scenes of parental guidance and teaching of the young. Visual storyline and lack of human intrusion capture beauty, dignity, and simplicity in a surprising perspective.”

Different as these two films are, they are united as common victims of the Empire State’s decency tribunal. Their great power was a quality that Hollywood, with all its riches, could never rival: a proximity to real life. No wonder the censors smashed down their stamps. An opportunity to see the world as it is–what could be more threatening?

Tickets - Pay what you can ($10 suggested donation), available at door.

Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served. Box office opens at 6:30pm. No entry 10 minutes after start of show.

Light Industry is supported by our members and, in part, by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, as well as the Mellon Foundation through the Coalition of Small Arts New York. Public assistance is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.