Census Bloodbath: Fright Flashback: Bad Cops

Welcome to Fright Flashback, where every week until the end of summer we will revisit an older horror film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to an upcoming new release. This week, we are anticipating Let's Be Cops, an alright-looking comedy about the two dudes from New Girl dressing up as cops and wreaking havoc about town. Today we'll explore a more evil film exploring the same premise, the 1988 slasher Maniac Cop.

Year: 1988

Director: William Lustig

Cast: Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell, Laurene Landon
Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Writer/producer Larry Cohen was behind some of the most beloved cult classics of the 80's, including It's Alive, The Stuff, and Q, The Winged Serpent. I am ashamed to say that I have seen none of these. In fact, the only work of his I'd seen before yesterday was the 1996 DTV Fourth of July venture Uncle Sam. Obviously, I have some deep issues to correct with my movie-watching, but there's hardly a better place to start than his first collaboration with director William Lustig, of the uniquely under-appreciated Maniac (I like him, but the man's not terribly creative when it comes to naming movies, is he?).

This film shows an even deeper, more thematic portrayal of the New York City underworld than Maniac, although thanks to its release date eight years later (after the rise and fall of the slasher genre) it doesn't quite have the same visceral impact. What is does have, however, is Cohen, who gamely brings to the table a sense of knowing exactly how to please the B-picture audience even without high-impact gore.

Bruce Campbell in a white V-neck is one of those ways.

Maniac Cop tells the story of Lieutenant McCrae (Tom Atkins), a wizened cop who's tracking a killing spree supposedly perpetrated by a man in uniform. After the force detains the young Officer Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell) following the murder of his wife - which occured moments after she caught him in bed with vice officer Theresa Mallory (Laurene Landon) - they think they case is more closed than a Blockbuster, but McCrae isn't so sure.

Neither are we, since the killer wears a name badge reading "Cordell" in the title sequence. Thus begins a race against the clock as McCrae and Theresa search for the legendary Officer Matt Cordell (Robert Z'Dar), who supposedly died years ago, and clear Jack's name.

That plot doesn't sound too much like a slasher movie. And Maniac Cop doesn't feel too much like a slasher movie. It absolutely is, considering its body count and its first act (in which two scenes repeat endlessly - civilian gets killed, cops discuss, lather, rinse, repeat), but it aspires to be much more than that, throwing in elements of crime procedural and hardboiled detective mystery (the mystery more pertains to how and why the killings are occurring rather than who is performing them - again, the name tag kinda deflates the suspense there).

Seriously, I'm not kidding. It's practically the first frame of the movie.

While it's not exactly what one would expect from a movie called Maniac Cop (for crying out loud), the mystery is engaging and the subtextual material hits a nerve. The killer is taking advantage of the public's trust of men in uniform, luring them into a false sense of security before he exterminates them. It really makes you think about the fact that law enforcement officials are real people. People with guns, fighting skills, and motives entirely hidden from us.

This isn't to say that one shouldn't trust the police or that law enforcement is inherently bad, but it plays on very real fears about the nature of violence and trust. How do we know that this stranger really has the best intentions for us? We don't. Unfortunately, this thematic material is mostly lost in the second half, but when it is present, it is sharp and unsettling to the extreme.

Much like the Maniac Cop's baton knife.

By all means, Maniac Cop should be dreadfully dull, as most low budget procedurals tend to be. The cool slasher killings die down after the opening half hour and never return, replaced by offscreen massacres and indecipherably edited violence. Compound that with Campbell's absence for almost the entirety of the second act and any other movie would have stopped dead in its tracks.

But this movie, being in the hands its in, takes those blows and survives. Larry Cohen provides the film with some great one-liners and B-movie appeal, creating a loopy tone that the actors pick up on with no problem. A favorite of mine is William Smith (also of Memorial Valley Massacre) as Captain Ripley, a perpetually-sunglassed man with a gravelly voice who is able to thoroughly digest the scenery because he chews it so well. Then of course there's the obvious choices - Bruce Campbell and Tom Atkins don't disappoint - but Landon holds her own, relishing every vowel she gets to spit out.

And Lustig's direction, while not exactly groundbreaking, does more than it needs to with the material, providing shot compositions that give the film a bit more gravitas than it would with any old hack. It is an unusual slasher film in that there is more than one shot that is actually memorable in the entire affair. And a flashback attack in a prison shower is an inspired riff on Psycho. Also I would be loathe not to mention a great scene copied almost beat for beat in Scream, in which a girl uses her windshield wipers to try to clean off blood. The more 80's movies watch, the more I can piece together Kevin Williamson's DVD collection.

Unfortunately, this hairstyle was not an inspiration for Scream.

In addition to its solid visual and tonal foundation, Maniac Cop has one more element to recommend it - an astonishingly progressive treatment of its female characters. The first victim is, of course, a woman walking home alone at night, but before she runs afoul of the business end of a maniac cop, she singlehandedly fights off two muggers with her purse. We also see a powerful woman in the media make a splash, not to mention that the heroine is "the other woman," a character usually beset with foul stereotypes.

One of the benefits of steering clear of the slasher model is that the inherent misogyny in the formula is nearly eradicated. So there's more than enough good in Maniac Cop to compensate for some of the more egregious missteps. And there isn't any space for the duller moments thanks to the zippy run time. There's dozens of slashers I'd pop in before this one, but if you're looking for a more obscure good time, maybe give this one a whirl.

Killer: Matt Cordell (Robert Z'Dar)

Final Girl: Theresa Mallory (Laurene Landon) feat. Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell)
Best Kill: A man has his face pressed into wet concrete, which dries overnight.
Sign of the Times: The coroner is buried under one of the most heart-wrecnching mullets of all time; someone makes a comment about the killing spree being "bigger than AIDS."

Scariest Moment: The attack scene in the shower is electrifying.

Weirdest Moment: A couple decides to make out because a red light is taking too long.
Champion Dialogue: "This isn't about romance. It's about murder."
Body Count: 17; not including an offscreen victim reported in the paper, two policemen mentioned but not seen in the station massacre, or the mayor who dies in the extended cut.

1. Cassie has her neck snapped.
2. Sam is slashed and thrown onto a windshield.
3. Some Dude has his face pressed into wet concrete.
4. Cop #1 is shot in the head by a frightened woman.
5. Ellen has her throat slit.
6. Cop #2 is hung offscreen.
7. Sally is slammed into a wall repeatedly.
8. Cop #3 has his face slammed into metal bars offscreen.
9. Cop #4 is strangled with handcuffs offscreen.
10. Cop #5 is hung offscreen.
11. Cop #6 is killed offscreen.
12. McCrae is thrown out a window.
13. Commissioner Pike is stabbed in the chest.
14. Captain Ripley is stabbed in the chest.
15. Cop #9 is stabbed in the stomach.
16. Security Guard is hit with a van.
17. Cop #10 is shot in the chest. 

TL;DR: Maniac Cop is a little uneven, but is one of the better crime procedural slashers with some good B-movie charm.
Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1397

Census Bloodbath: He's At Your Door

Year: 1980

Director: William Lustig

Cast: Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Abigail Clayton

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

As you can probably tell from my tirade in the beginning of my Killer Party review, watching all these 1980 slashers had left me feeling like a plastic bag drifting through the wind. The only problem is, I don't want to start again. But in order to reach the shining Mecca of 1981, I gotta drink the dregs. Luckily Maniac, released the day after Christmas in the year of our lord Tom Savini, was like finding a lump of sugar stuck in the bottom of my teacup.

As the frequent observer of this blog may have predicted, Maniac is not what anybody could in good conscience call a "great" film. But what it is doing is so daring and strange that I have to give it props just for the foolhardy gusto with which it tells its story.

And he's dancing like he's never danced before.

Maniac tells the story of one Frank Zito (Joe Spinell, also of The Last Horror Film and, surprisingly, two Rocky movies and two Godfather movies), a man whose mommy issues extend well beyond the grave (and well beyond the expiration date for Psycho ripoffs, but this one's better than the dreary Funeral Home or the noxious Silent Scream from the same year). His particular issues send him careening out of control one holiday season (this is the third and by far the best 1980 slasher to be set around Christmas time), and Frank departs his apartment every night with his handy toolkit of sharp implements and puts them to good use, murdering and scalping women he believes to contain his mother's soul and nailing their scalps to mannequins back at his apartment. You know, like you do.

Maniac is one of the few films in the 80's to make truly interesting use of the situation of being caught in between the frights of the 70's and the nascent slasher genre. DNA from many other film styles are conglomerated into one ugly, but eternally compelling mess, a heaping pile of elements from early slashers films, a heavy dollop of Psycho, some nasty grindhouse thrown in to provide a basic structure, and a sprinkling of the Italian giallo for flavor.

All of these combine into one brutal, ugly flick, the perfect surrounding for the brutal, ugly man that is Frank Zito.

The camera adds ten pounds... of FURY.

The world around Frank is dull and grey - a night-addled funhouse mirror vision of New York City. And his interiors are no better. Frank's apartment is full of squat furniture and garish colors that provide a harsh contrast to the grey world outside, a very Italian and very unsettling touch.

It ain't easy being purple.

Maniac has no high machinations. It doesn't want to play with delicate themes or in-depth psychological analysis. It just wants to punch you in the nads as hard as it can for as long as possible, showing the dark side of the world we live in. At this, it is only intermittently successful but aided in huge part by Tom Savini's masterly gore effects.

I have sung the praises of Mr. Savini far and wide, but would never pass up the opportunity to do so again. His grisly gore effects revolutionized horror in America when they first came to the screen in Friday the 13th and would continue to turn up in some of the best movies of the decade including The Burning, The Prowler, and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. And Maniac is no exception.

Despite being perhaps less gory than the film's notorious reputation would have you believe, Savini delivers the grue with as much care as the doctor who had to deliver Princess Kate's baby. Unique in the slasher genre thus far, we get several deaths by sword and two brutal scalpings, the former of which probably earned the film its nasty word of mouth and deserved it. But there's no ignoring the fact that it's a work of a master of the craft.

I'm not actually sure I can show screenshots without ruffling a few feathers, so here's a kitten playing the piano.

So. Intermittently successful. I've chosen to mainly focus on my praise for the film, but there is certainly. First, there's the dismal budget and the fact that most of the minor parts were cast with porn actresses to cut costs. Porn actresses in the new millennium are hardly known for their acting prowess, but imagine the crop of talent available immediately post-70's. It's not pretty.

And the middle half of the plot can be quite repetitive, although I hardly noticed. As a veteran of watching such films as Psycho Santa and Memorial Day, I've built up a high tolerance. This is perhaps not one of my prouder skills. Luckily things pick up after Frank meets Anna (Caroline Munro, also of The Last Horror Film - with our Mr. Spinell - and Slaughter High), a plucky photographer who brings out the best in him. Unfortunately the best in him is still a murderous slob, but at least he buys her a stuffed bear. 

And, alas, the film is full of victims whose main line of defense is trying to shriek the killer into submission while standing stock still and never moving a muscle. This sounds misogynistic and it is, but any masochistic feminist who decided to rent Maniac on movie night would be pleasantly disappointed, because the film is shockingly uninterested in exploiting female flesh.

There's one topless scene, but it lasts about a half second when a woman is in a bath and she immediately covers herself demurely with bubbles. My theory is that director William Lustig (also of Uncle Sam and all three Maniac Cop movies) didn't want to distract anybody from the unrelenting violence of the picture, even for a second.

And the... whatever the hell this is.

So, yes. It has flaws. But the film is so deeply frenetic and interesting that it is hard to find an overwhelming fault to doom it entirely. Most importantly, even in the draggiest sequences, the time just whisks by. After the likes of Terror on Tour and To All A Goodnight, I had forgotten that movies didn't have to be boring.

And there's a handful of hearty cinematic moments that pepper the general dreariness of the production values, ramping up the tension and just letting the movie have a chance to breathe and have fun. And the ending - hoo boy the ending - is so jaw-droppingly picturesque in its violence and inimitable in its gonzo balls-to-the-wall approach. Honestly, the entire film is worth seeing just for those final moments. The fact that the rest of the film isn't half bad is merely window dressing.

No, it's not going to win any awards anytime soon. And that window of time has already long since passed. But it's not the worst way to spend ninety minutes and any 80's enthusiast who wants a crash course in the world of horror at the beginning of the decade should look no further than this film.

Killer: Frank Zito (Joe Spinell)

Final Girl: Anna D'Antoni (Caroline Munro)

Best Kill: Tom Savini gets a chance to show what he's worth by blowing his own head off (well, a character played by him) with a shotgun, exploding into a million tiny pieces.

Sign of the Times: Anna's everyday "lounge around the house" outfit is a pair of tight red leather pants.

Scariest Moment: The interactions Frank has with the mannequins never fail to be terrifying.

Weirdest Moment: A victim hiding from the killer strains her face and neck in such a way that the only possible explanation is severe constipation. The fact that she's hiding in a bathroom does not help matters.

Champion Dialogue: "You're the most beautiful woman I've seen since my mom."

Body Count: 8; including the killer.

1. Beach Girl has her throat slit.
2. Beach Boy is garroted with wire.
3. Hooker is strangled.
4. Disco Boy is shot in the head with a shotgun.
5. Disco Girl is shot to death.
6. Nurse is stabbed through the back with a sword.
7. Rita is stabbed in the abdomen.
8. Frank Zito impales himself on his own sword. 

TL;DR: Maniac is a deeply messy but infinitely compelling violent fright flick.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1396