Maniac (1980) Analysis Film/Horror RT: 88 minutes No MPAA Rating: (extremely graphic violence and gore, brief nudity and sexuality, language, general sleaze) Director: William Lustig Screenplay: C.A. Rosenberg and Joe Spinell Music: Jay Chattaway Cinematography: Robert Lindsay Release date: March 6, 1981 (US) Cast: Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Abigail Clayton, Kelly Piper, Rita Montone, Tom Savini, Hyla Marrow, James Brewster, Linda Lee Walter, Tracie Evans, Sharon Mitchell. Box Office: $10M (US) Body Count: 8
Rating: ****
Yes, you read it right. I gave the low-budget slasher flick Maniac a four-star rating. Why would I do that? After all, I’m a reasonably educated person who should know better than to recommend much less watch movies that depict violence against women. By everything that is decent in this world, I should be condemning it. So why am I not pleading with you to not waste your time on it? Easy, I’m a gorehound and just love a horror movie that isn’t afraid to go the extra mile with the blood and brains. Maniac, a perfect mix of gory splatter and grindhouse sleaze, goes a whole marathon in that department.
The late, great Joe Spinell stars as Frank Zito, the maniac of the title. You can tell just by looking at him he’s at best a repulsive creep. Paunchy, middle-aged and shabbily dressed, he mutters, grunts and growls his way through life. This is one time you CAN tell a book by its cover. Frank is a serial killer who practices his craft on hookers, nurses, models and couples having (or about to have) sex with a variety of weapons- e.g. garrotes, bayonets, switchblades and shotguns. In a stroke of pure gory inspiration, he takes their scalps and nails them to the mannequins he keeps around his dingy apartment. Why does Frank do this? Shouldn’t it be obvious? He has mother issues. It’s right out of the Norman Bates handbook on psychology. He frequently talks to himself, first internally then out loud. He hallucinates with great frequency as the movie progresses. By all accounts, he should have been committed years ago.
He takes a stab at normalcy when he strikes up a relationship with a beautiful photographer, Anna (Munro, Starcrash), he first encounters in Central Park. She takes his picture from a distance. He gets her address by sneaking a peek at her camera case. Later, he shows up at her place and asks to see her work. He follows that up by asking her to dinner. Now here’s my question. Anna seems like an intelligent, judicious woman. Why would she let a strange man into her apartment much less go anywhere with him? Shouldn’t she be asking him how he got her address? I guess her mum never had the “stranger danger” talk with her as a child.
I like many character actors, but I’d have to say Spinell is one of my favorites. His looks made him an ideal choice to play sleazy characters in movies like Cruising, The First Deadly Sin, Night Shift, Vigilante and The Last Horror Film. Maniac is definitely his top performance. It’s both bold and disturbing. He is truly scary as a loner with deep psychological issues that compel him to go out nights and hunt for victims. He’s not an unstoppable boogeyman like Jason or Freddy. Frank is a fully formed character with motive. Moreover, he hits you with the realization that an individual like him could exist in real life. It’s his performance that elevates Maniac above other slasher movies. Munro, playing a gorgeous woman of questionable intelligence, is quite good as Anna even if her line readings tend to be wooden. Her relationship with Frank adds a Beauty and the Beast element to the proceedings.
Directed by William Lustig (Vigilante), Maniac contains some of the most graphic violence I’ve ever seen. It’s extreme enough that Lustig didn’t even bother submitting it to the MPAA for an official rating which surely would have been the dreaded X. He chose instead to release it with a “No One Under 17 Admitted” policy that most theaters probably didn’t even bother to enforce. The killings are something else. One victim gets garroted. Another is impaled with a bayonet. One is tied down and stabbed with a switchblade. In the most notorious scene (and, of course, my favorite), Frank literally blows a guy’s head off with a shotgun. It’s not a simple shot to the head; I’m talking blood, bone and brain matter everywhere. The victim is played by the movie’s makeup guy Tom Savini who does a remarkable job with the effects. He is a true master of his craft, but I don’t need to tell you that.
Considering his limited budget which caused him to have to film most of the movie guerrilla-style (he couldn’t afford the necessary permits), Lustig does a bang-up job on Maniac. The locations-e.g. fleabag hotels, subway station bathrooms, the nighttime streets of Times Square- he uses are perfect. They give it just the right atmosphere. It positively oozes sleaze, slime and despair.
What I admire most about Maniac is its purity of form. It’s a splatter flick through and through. It exists solely to show grisly murders in graphic close-up to bloodthirsty audiences. The plot is simplicity itself. It’s sleazy, ugly, violent and disturbing. It’s definitely more grindhouse than arthouse. At the same time, it is its own form of art. I gave Maniac my highest rating because it has the cojones to show what it shows. It also gives us a killer with whom we can almost sympathize, emphasis on the almost. I think it’s GREAT!
