{"id":6791,"date":"2024-10-25T11:18:16","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6791"},"modified":"2024-10-25T11:18:16","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:18:16","slug":"maniac-1980","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/maniac-1980\/","title":{"rendered":"Maniac (1980)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Maniac <\/strong>(1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Analysis Film\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA Rating: (extremely graphic violence and gore, brief nudity and sexuality, language, general sleaze)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: William Lustig\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: C.A. Rosenberg and Joe Spinell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jay Chattaway\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Robert Lindsay\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 6, 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Abigail Clayton, Kelly Piper, Rita Montone, Tom Savini, Hyla Marrow, James Brewster, Linda Lee Walter, Tracie Evans, Sharon Mitchell.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $10M (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Body Count: 8<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0Yes, you read it right. I gave the low-budget slasher flick Maniac <\/strong>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\u2019m a gorehound and just love a horror movie that isn\u2019t afraid to go the extra mile with the blood and brains. Maniac<\/strong>, a perfect mix of gory splatter and grindhouse sleaze, goes a whole marathon in that department.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The late, great Joe Spinell stars as Frank Zito, the maniac of the title. You can tell just by looking at him he\u2019s 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\u2019t it be obvious? He has mother issues. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0He 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\u2019s 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\u2019t she be asking him how he got her address? I guess her mum never had the \u201cstranger danger\u201d talk with her as a child.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I like many character actors, but I\u2019d 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 <\/strong>is definitely his top performance. It\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s his performance that elevates Maniac <\/strong>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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by William Lustig (Vigilante), Maniac <\/strong>contains some of the most graphic violence I\u2019ve ever seen. It\u2019s extreme enough that Lustig didn\u2019t 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 \u201cNo One Under 17 Admitted\u201d policy that most theaters probably didn\u2019t 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\u2019s head off with a shotgun. It\u2019s not a simple shot to the head; I\u2019m talking blood, bone and brain matter everywhere. The victim is played by the movie\u2019s makeup guy Tom Savini who does a remarkable job with the effects. He is a true master of his craft, but I don\u2019t need to tell you that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Considering his limited budget which caused him to have to film most of the movie guerrilla-style (he couldn\u2019t afford the necessary permits), Lustig does a bang-up job on Maniac<\/strong>. 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What I admire most about Maniac <\/strong>is its purity of form. It\u2019s 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\u2019s sleazy, ugly, violent and disturbing. It\u2019s definitely more grindhouse than arthouse. At the same time, it is its own form of art. I gave Maniac <\/strong>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\u2019s GREAT!\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maniac (1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Analysis Film\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA Rating: (extremely graphic violence and gore, brief nudity and sexuality, language, general sleaze)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: William Lustig\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: C.A. Rosenberg and Joe Spinell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jay Chattaway\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Robert Lindsay\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 6, 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Abigail Clayton, Kelly Piper, Rita Montone, Tom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7220,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror","category-scary-gory-wild-i-love-it"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Maniac-1980-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6791"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7222,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6791\/revisions\/7222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}