Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

bkoganbing Kerwin Matthews an American expatriate painter is essentially bumming his way across France when he encounters a mother and stepdaughter Nadia Gray and Lilianne Brousse. He starts getting interested in Brousse, but then Gray turns on the charm because she has plans for Matthews.She wants Matthews to help her break her husband out of an insane asylum where he's been incarcerated for several years after killing someone and judged insane. So he's had the padded jail cell, but all I can say is that Gray has her own reasons for wanting her husband and they have nothing to do with what she tells Matthews.I had a lot of trouble with this one. Primarily with the character of Matthews who in his salad days usually played honest and sincere men. But never outright fools as he is here. Granted Gray is one attractive woman, but I think most of us would have been out the door in three seconds flat when she mentioned a prison break for her husband. And the reason Gray tells Matthews she wants to bust him out wouldn't fool the horniest male teenager.Donald Houston plays a guard at the asylum who has an agenda of his own. Hardly the best from Hammer Pictures.

utgard14 I'm a fan of Jimmy Sangster's work and after reading a few reviews of this movie here I was anxious to see it. Unfortunately I can't give this one a rave review. The best I can say is that it's not a bad movie and it's worth seeing once. After an intriguing opening the movie proceeds at a snail's pace for the longest time. It is excruciatingly slow. Since the actors involved are all as exciting as cardboard you can imagine how much slower that makes an already slow pace feel. Finally business picks up and then we're bombarded with one plot twist after another, not one of which is particularly impressive. The only twist I didn't see coming was one that was out of left field and there were no clues in the movie beforehand so it felt like a cheat. It's like Sangster knew his twists couldn't match Psycho so he decided on quantity instead of quality. If you're a fan of Jimmy Sangster or Hammer, then check it out but keep expectations low.

Brian Walker A good script from Hammer stalwart Jimmy Sangster who also wrote the excellent Paranoiac, and matched by sharp direction and photography. A shame, then, that the cast are such a let-down. The well-known ham Donald Houston lives down to his reputation - his voice was dubbed, a pity that his performance couldn't be erased. The French actress Lillian Brousse is excellent as the innocent daughter, but the American Kerwin Matthews makes for a very anodyne lead. The rest of the cast are British, utilizing French accents straight out of 'Allo 'Allo. Hammer have made some excellent non-horror movies such as Taste of Fear, and but for the dreadful acting this could have been one of them.

getcater As a Hammer film, Maniac comes as something of a surprise. One normally associates the brand with studio-based horror films of average to low quality, typical Brit-flick production values and a home-grown cast of stolid, reliable faces. If that's what you've come to expect from Hammer, Maniac will either disappoint or delight.Shot extensively on location in the Camargue, in high contrast black and white 2.35:1 widescreen, the movie makes effective use of some startlingly dramatic scenery that's exploited to the full by a clearly above average director of photography. The film noir mood and atmosphere are reminiscent of 1962's Cape Fear, and whilst Maniac fails to match that film's pitch of sustained suspense and repressed anger, it's a creditable attempt by Hammer to do something a bit darker and more mature than usual.The acting is efficient, if somewhat underplayed, and it's a surprise to see an actor of the calibre of Donald Houston being dubbed (it sounds like Roger Delgado – any offers?) Thriller fans will be disappointed at the lack of any truly scary moments, and the plot has a few more twists than are absolutely necessary; but if you appreciate good black and white photography and films that don't slavishly tick all the predictable boxes, Maniac has much to recommend it. A good restoration would certainly find an audience on DVD.