Gérard Depardieu begins an affair with a professional dominatrix, or maîtresse, who keeps a dungeon below stairs to entertain her masochistic clients, in this comic tale of transgression and sexual-emotional entanglement. But can he accept his lover's job, fulfilling the fantasies of perverted, wealthy men? Even though the BBFC refused to give this film a certificate in 1976, they admitted that it was "an extraordinary film, both in theme and execution."

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Joe Spinell stars as social misfit Frank Zito who, abused by his mother as a child, grows up to collect the bloody scalps of New York women. By day he lives in a slum basement room with only shop window mannequins, dressed in severed scalps, for company. By night he prowls the streets of New York on a killing spree. Maniac set a rarely equalled standard for slasher films and helped define a decade of seedy cinema in the 1990s.

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