The Oily Maniac (1976)

just watch it!

Absolutely brilliant

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Certainly better than the most known toxic advenger, but not a real cult movie.

After casting a magic spell and covering himself from head to foot in oil, cripple Shen Yuan (Danny Lee) transforms into an oozing monster to seek revenge on those who have wronged his family.I'd been sitting on director Meng Hua Ho's The Oily Maniac for quite some time, waiting for the right moment for some seriously silly and ridiculously outrageous Shaw Brothers exploitation. I think I got my expectations up a little too high. While the film does deliver a memorably daft 'man in a rubber suit' monster, AND plenty of gratuitous female nudity (nearly all of the women get their jubblies out), it fails to completely live up to its wonderfully wacky premise and promising title, the creature not nearly maniacal enough. Where I had hoped that the man turned walking oil slick would kill countless bad guys in an OTT gory fashion, he merely swats most of his adversaries to the ground. Only one victim goes out in style, his head crushed by the oily maniac, but it's all too brief.While I can't be too harsh when rating a film that gets the lovely Ping Chen (as Shen Yuan's love interest, Little Yue) to strip off more than once, or that features so many loud shirts (every bad guy wears one), I can only bring myself to rate this cheeze-fest a middling 5/10. The Mighty Peking Man, which also stars Danny Lee, is a much more satisfying slice of Asian trash from the same director.

THE OILY MANIAC isn't a film you hear much about, really. In fact I'd never heard of it and certainly had read nothing about it when I sat down to watch it, so I had no idea what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, this is a cheesy B-movie about a rampaging monster-man who looks a little like Swamp Thing, but it's a solid effort for the genre. This film was made by the Shaw Brothers studio so automatically the production values are superior and the technicalities are spot on. The Shaw Brothers always knew how to make even the most rubbishy film look fantastic and they do so here.Another benefit is that the studio employ professional, well-known actors to lend gravitas to their roles. Danny Lee (later in John Woo's THE KILLER) is a thoroughly sympathetic anti-hero and he puts across his character's emotions very well. To be fair, it's a meaty role for any actor – Lee plays a crippled guy who's absolutely brimming with pent-up rage – but Lee is the perfect choice for the role. There are plenty of familiar actors filling out the cast, including Lily Li as a potential love interest.There seems to be two parts to this movie. The first part is your typical monster action flick, as Lee transforms into the oily man and wreaks havoc on various bad guys. There are some extended fight scenes, most notably at the climax, where the bad guys chop off various bits of the maniac's body, only to see them grow back again! All done very well with the right balance of drama, horror, and outright comedy. Watching the oily maniac run down the street, smash a bad guy's head in or do something else outrageous is great fun, but I especially enjoyed the way Lee transforms into the creature – by literally bathing in oil! There's a really funny scene where he runs into some road works and jumps into a barrel of the bubbling stuff while the workmen look on, amazed.Obviously, the special effects aren't up to scratch, but that's part of the charm. The rubber suited monster is a laugh riot and the bits where he turns into puddles of oil are hilariously awful with some second rate animation. The second part of the film is your typical sleaze flick with loads of topless nudity from the female cast and some protracted rape scenes. There's also an interlude at a plastic surgeon's where the female doctor performs operations on a hooker to make her look like a virgin again! It's all very bizarre and unwieldy and that's exactly the reason I liked it – I can't think of another film quite like this off the top of my head. Director Ho Meng Hua made a string of equally obscure and lurid monstrosities like THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN and BLACK MAGIC and his films are worth anybody's time.

I was gonna say something about as I was watching this it just felt like I was watching a special flick, a cult classic if you will. Of course, some other user comment says the same thing. Well, TS! The Oily Maniac is a memorable and fun trip down slimy monster revenge road!Story revolves around revenge and the moral of "justice will prevail". They say that in the movie, that this is the moral. With Uncle Ping(?) being unfairly put to death, our handicapped hero learns the secret from Uncle to get even with the baddies who are causing all this havoc. And with the directional tattoo copied off of Uncle's back, our hero will now be able to turn into, The Oily Maniac! Watch out sleazy bad guys, cause your about to get greasified! The film is just basically our Oily Maniac taking out each bad guy that he's aware of. Pretty simple, but pretty entertaining as well. The Oily Maniac can turn into an oil slick which he can use for stealth attacks and even travel at faster speeds, though he's no slouch at running or jumping either. He also has the power of regrowth! And of course, yelling when he's about to strike.With some fun sleaze and action to be had, the Oily Maniac delivers in the areas that it needs to be an entertaining flick. My only real gripe is the lack of any real gore. If the deaths were more gruesome this film could have been a classic, but instead it's just a cult classic. By the by, someone needs to write South Park and tell them to do a spin-off episode with Jimmy as the Oily Maniac.