THE OILY MANIAC

released OUT NOW! 1976 | 18 | Blu-ray

Director Ho-Meng Hua Cast li Hsiu-Hsien, Chen Ping, lily Hi, Hua lun

There’s something oddly endearing about the titular terror of this cheesy superhero/ horror hybrid from Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers Studios. With his yellow eyes, wonky teeth and visible heart, he looks like an eight-year-old’s crayon drawing come to life.

Thanks to a spell, a lawyer who gets about on crutches due to childhood polio acquires the ability to turn into an oily monster, then uses it to seep under doorways for acts of vigilantism. Pretty much everything about this raises a smile: the way he must douse himself in oil before transforming; the “superhuman leaps” that reverse a stuntman jumping off a roof; the way his arrival’s accompanied by a shameless rip-off of the Jaws theme...

Everything except how indiscriminately violent he is – happy to strangle a female miscreant, or stamp on their face. The film is also uncomfortably eager to use rape as a pretext for displaying naked breasts. Though the rapists are punished, it’s clear titillation is the driving force here. Even as ’70s exploitation films go, The Oily Maniac is, ahem, crude – and definitely not slick.

Extras Writer Calum Waddell discusses the film’s relationship to Malaysian folk tales and 1956’s The Curse Of The Oily Maniac in an informative 16-minute talking head; a booklet. Ian Berriman