10 Most Controversial Films Of The Classical Hollywood Era

4. Maniac (1934)

Maniac, also known as Sex Maniac, is one of Hollywood's most famous pre-Hays Code exploitation-disguised-as-a-horror films ever released. Marketed with the tagline "He menaced women with his weird desires!", you can expect the film to be filled to the brim with controversy. And boy was it. The film depicts a former vaudeville impersonator working as a lab assistant to a wannabe Dr. Frankenstein, right down to the bringing dead to life thing. However, the lab assistant kills the Doctor after seeing the Doctor's 'work'. In order to hide the crime, the assistant assumes the Doctor's identity and work, and in the process of doing so, he slowly goes insane. This also brings misfortune to the Doctor's female patients who are still coming around for therapy sessions. As the film unfolds, it didn't hold back in its depiction of insanity and cranks up the exploitation to levels where even present day films would cringe. Shots of scantily-clad or nude women soon gave way to a few disturbing rape scenes (featuring more nudity) before culminating in a scene where the lead actor ingests an eyeball taken from a living cat. Yeah, there's no question as to why Manic courted so much controversy back in its day. To calm everyone's nerves a bit, no animals were harmed in this film and the stunt cat used was born with only one eye.