The Manipulator (DVD)

A tripped-out vision of insanity featuring a tour de farce performance by Mickey Rooney. It's also an amazing achievement, which quickly destroys any preconceptions you might walk in with ... After 90 minutes of its dizzying pace, you feel like you're on the verge of madness too. Overbearing, pretentious and brilliant, this is one film that bears repeat viewing. -- Steve Puchalski, Shock Cinema

The legendary Mickey Rooney gives one of his most shocking, shattering performances as B.J. Lang, a deluded Hollywood has-been obsessed with making his greatest and final masterpiece. In an abandoned studio warehouse filled with dusty, decaying props, he holds hostage a woman he calls "Carlotta," intending her to play Roxanne to his Cyrano de Bergerac. Terrorizing and tormenting Carlotta, captor and captive are spiraling downward into a surreal, hallucinatory madness. RATED R (CONTAINS NUDITY AND VIOLENCE)

Academy Award winning actor Mickey Rooney lived one of the most remarkable, durable and turbulent careers in Hollywood history, beginning as a child actor during the silent era. In the 1930s, he became one of the most popular stars in the world, headlining MGM's long running Andy Hardy series.

Siren Luana Anders (1938-1996) made memorable appearances in Roger Corman's 1961 version of Pit and the Pendulum, Francis Ford Coppola's directorial debut Dementia 13 (1963), as well as opposite Peter Fonda in The Trip (1967), and Easy Rider (1969).

The Manipulator (aka B.J. Lang Presents) marked the first and only feature directorial credit for Yabo Yablonsky (1931-2005), who co-wrote the all-star martial arts thriller Jaguar Lives! (1979), as well as John Huston's 1981 World War II saga Victory.

• horror