The Maniac Cook is a 1909 American silent thriller film produced by the Biograph Company of New York, directed by D. W. Griffith, and starring Anita Hendrie in the title role.

Footage from this short survives in several formats and is preserved among the holdings of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.[3] In a 1985 published catalog of early silent films in its collection, the Library of Congress summarizes this Biograph short as a disturbing tale of a "mentally deranged cook" who "removes [her employers'] infant from its crib, and decides on a diabolical plot of putting the baby in the oven so that when the family lights the stove, they will be responsible for the baby's death.

The policeman, who have been searching the neighborhood, are attracted by the screams of Mrs. Holland and take the cook in charge, and baby is rescued from her precarious position none the worse off for her experience.

[4]The screenplay was produced at Biograph's main studio in New York City, which in 1908 was located inside a large renovated brownstone mansion in Manhattan at 11 East 14th Street.

Remarks about the film published in 1909 newspapers and trade journals are generally quite brief and with few exceptions are connected to advertisements for the Biograph release and to its promotion at various theaters throughout the United States.

In Utah, for example, the newspaper The Salt Lake Herald announces in its January 10, 1909 issue that The Maniac Cook is among a slate of "high class" motion pictures being presented at the Lyric Theatre and assures prospective ticket-buyers that the photoplay "causes real thrills".

[7] One film reviewer, however, in the January 9, 1909 issue of the New York trade journal The Moving Picture World does provide a fairly lengthy assessment of the thriller, one that touches on a series of elements pertaining to what the reviewer calls a "masterpiece", including comments about the short's cinematography, the believability of Anita Hendrie's acting style in the picture, as well as the emotional responses that some of its scenes evoked from theater audiences:As a specimen of good photography, the Biograph Company is scoring a success in this film.

[3][c] Submitted by Biograph to the United States government in December 1908, shortly before the film's release, the roll is part of the original documentation required by federal authorities for motion picture companies in their applications to obtain copyright protection for their productions.