Tag: William Lustig

We’re back to the world of 80’s horror again. This is 1980’s “Maniac” from director William Lustig, who would go on to create the Maniac Cop franchise in the late 80’s. The story is by Joe Spinell who also stars as the titular character. Spinell is mostly known as an actor. Cinematography is by Robert Lindsay and music is by Jay Chattaway. In the UK this was one of the infamous “Video Nasties” and was banned until 2002. This features the effects work of Tom Savini. Savini also has a small role as one of the victims and as a result got to blow his own head up. Effectively he was cast because he happened to already have a model of his own head for just such occasion. That’s Tom Savini for you.

The movie follows the exploits of deranged serial killer “Frank Zito” (Spinell) as he goes on a killing spree around New York City. Zito’s madness stems from his mistreatment at the hands of his deceased prostitute mother. So now he seeks out young women to kill. He also takes their scalps and puts them on his mannequins. After photographer “Anna D’Antoni” (Caroline Munro) takes his photo, he tracks her to her apartment. However, when he introduces himself he is invited inside as she recognized him from the photo. The pair start dating, but with Zito still dealing with his madness things cannot possibly last.

Character Study

This is an interesting horror film, but with a number of issues and limitations. The movie follows the psycho, which gives Zito a lot more depth than killers often get. The main problem is we don’t really get to know any of the other characters. Even Anna is just sort of there. It doesn’t help that she is so incredibly nice and friendly to this person that was very obviously stalking her. One of her colleagues Rita acts similarly when Zito randomly turns up at her apartment. She doesn’t invite him in and start dating him, but isn’t remotely freaked out but this near-stranger bringing her a bracelet. Moments like these took me out of the narrative. Really any scene not directly related to killing or madness was a negative.

The movie is a character study of a psychopath. These kinds of movies are fairly common these days, but in 1980 I can only think of a handful of examples that would have existed. Peeping Tom (1960) stands out the most and is easily a superior film. Better filmed, better acted and with a more complicated and involved story. However for what this film lacks, it attempts to make up for it with violence and gore. In it’s day, the violence would have been quite shocking. These days, not so much, but the kill scenes still stand out 45 years later as somewhat unique and original. Tom Savini’s effects work obviously helped, but the scenes are all well designed and emphasize the sheer terror of the situation.

Conclusion

Maniac is strangely boring for a movie with so much death and violence. We really know all we need to about the killer fairly early on and after that it just becomes rinse and repeat until he inevitably the wheels fall off the wagon. The scenes of madness are played out quite well and the kills are very well set up and executed. But despite that, what little plot surrounds it isn’t particularly interesting and most of the characters don’t feel realistic. Anna should have been introduced earlier. Instead second half of the movie feels rushed while the earlier half lacks content outside of kills and the killer talking to himself.

That’s the thing with this film, the script has some good ideas but fails in the detail and frankly with some of the basics. In places it is very atmospheric and it sort of rides the line between gritty 70’s horrors and 80’s slashers. Honestly, this is a hard one to score. Horror fans may find this interesting, but not ground breaking. There are certainly better psychopath character study movies out there. Overall I think this falls just short of a general recommendation. So this is a high 5.5/10 (High enough that I will round up to 6 for my IMDb score). One for the horror faithful out there, but the general audience probably won’t like it.