#31 – MANIAC (1980)
Dir. William Lustig
Matty, Chris and I put a lot of work into our top 31. We compiled all of our personal favorite horror movies, then took the duplicates and knew those would make this list. Those movies pretty much makes up our top 10. Then we went around and gave our reasons for what movies would round out the rest of the list. I really think that the 31 films we chose are all great and hope this list will be different than some of the other ones making rounds on the net this month. I’ll get started on number 31.
MANIAC
I warned you not to go out tonight; but you didn’t listen, now you’ve been murdered and your scalp is not resting atop a mannequins head in the seedy underbelly of New York City.
Maniac follows a psychotic and deranged serial killer Frank Zito, played by Joe Spinell, who lurks the shadows of New York City at all hours of the night looking for his next victim. He preys on defenseless women and follows them to a point where they are most vulnerable and brutally murders and scalps them. Some of these murders actually take place in the home of the women involved. Frank then takes the scalps of these women and pins them to mannequins that are placed sporadically throughout his small, dank, apartment. He continues like this until he meets a girl that he seems to like. He woos her and they go out on a few dates and she actually seems to enjoy herself. He was actually preparing for the kill that meant the most to him.
If you haven’t seen this movie and enjoy horror movies in the least bit, I recommend finding this one. It was actually recently released as on Blu-Ray as a special 30th anniversary edition. The release has plenty of special features including a great commentary by special effects master Tom Savini who even has a great little cameo as “Disco Boy”. Because of Savini’s help Maniac had some really great special effects and they didn’t skimp on the gore. Savini pulled a bunch of material he had in his closet to use since they were working with a very low budget. I think this added to the greatness of the film and this might be Savini’s last role before he had his nose job.
Maniac was written by Joe Spinell and C.A. Rosenberg who wanted to make “Jaws on land”. This lead to many scenes focusing on the victims trying to escape and plenty of P.O.V. shots from Frank as he hunted his kills. The movie has some great camera work and overall is really fun to watch. The only part of the movie that detracts from it is when Frank Zito suddenly changes demeanor and begins courting a women and the way he goes about it seems very outside of the character the movie worked so hard to create. Apparently this was done because just to get the actress more screen time as her husband was helping out financially. Overall I think it was worth it to get the film made.
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