Director: William Lustig

Written by: C.A. Rosenberg & Joe Spinell

Starring: Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Abigail Clayton, Kelly Piper, Rita Montone, Tom Savini, Hyla Marrow

Music by: Jay Chattaway

Special makeup effects by: Tom Savini

Taglines: “I warned you not to go out tonight”

“Run from this man!”

“You can lock your windows and doors…But you can’t lock the madman out of your mind.”

“It will tear the life out of you.”

STORY

Frank Zito is a strange, ugly, lonely man living in New York City. He begins an unlikely relationship with a young woman while taking photographs of people in Central Park. However, he hides a dark secret – he is a serial killer who likes to roam the dark streets and collect the scalps of his victims…

OPINION

There are two memorable quotes that perfectly describe Maniac in my opinion. The first is the tagline on the above DVD, “I warned you not to go out tonight” laid over a picture of a man holding a knife and a bloody scalp. There’s something extremely dark and slightly humorous about that in my mind, but not something you can really laugh out loud at in pleasant company. The other is from a guy I used to work with, who said that Maniac is the only film he ever watched where he decided he needed to shower afterwards.

Maniac is essentially a precursor to movies like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Man Bites Dog. There are only really two very thin plot threads to hold together the impressive stalk-and-kill sequences. The first is the increasingly unlikely relationship between Caroline Munro – cast because her husband helped finance the film – and Joe Spinell (one of Hammer’s most beautiful lead actresses paired with a short, fat, pock-marked creepy guy? Sure, why not?). The second is Zito’s final descent into complete madness.

All of this is really held together by a fantastic performance by Joe Spinell. He is utterly convincing and terrifying as an inhuman monster who scalps his victims and nails their scalps to mannequins he keeps around his apartment. However, he’s also sympathetic outside of the killing sequences, lost, lonely, abused and tormented. You actually do feel something for him in his final moments, a great feat considering how psychotic he truly is.

It’s a grim experience for sure, not least because the killings themselves are based on the then-recent exploits of the Zodiac and “Summer of Sam” killers, among others. The grubby, seedy and dangerous New York streets of the time are captured in all their glory. Supposedly, Lustig did not have all the necessary permits to film in the city, so he shot quickly, comically fleeing the scene after filming the infamous shotgun murder scene as it was illegal to fire a gun within city limits. There are actually a lot of great anecdotes on the Blue Underground commentary, and I recommend anyone interested in this movie to pick it up.

There are 2 kind-of follow-ups to this movie available. Spinell pays a similar character, again stalking Caroline Munro (this time around the Cannes Film Festival), in The Last Horror Film (a.k.a. The Last Horror Film). There was also a direct sequel planned for this movie entitled Maniac 2: Mr Robby, but Spinell sadly died before it could be completed. Footage was apparently available on the US laserdisc of Maniac.

Final amusing piece of trivia: the famous song “Maniac” from the 1983 movie Flashdance was deemed ineligible when it was nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Song, after it emerged that the song had originally been written for this film. The lyrics would have gone something like “He’s a maniac, maniac that’s for sure. He will kill your cat and nail it to the door.”. Sweet…

CENSORSHIP

Maniac was refused certification by the BBFC in 1981. It was never officially banned under the VRA (i.e., it was never on the “video nasties” list), but it remained officially unavailable after a censored version was finally passed on DVD in  2002. There’s an interesting story surrounding the hypocrisy in British censorship during the 80s and 90s, thoroughly detailed at Melon Farmers. In short, a cut version was prepared by Exploited Video but the BBFC delayed classification and ultimately refused to pass the movie after a long battle (essentially retaining a ban on the movie). This was a favoured tactic at the time, especially when dealing with the likes of Exploited and Redemption, who often tried to pass as-complete-as-possible versions of ex-”video nasties” and other banned movies. Smaller companies couldn’t absorb the costs of waiting for the certification, so they either withdrew or bankrupt.

The decision was made around the same time as Adrian Lyne’s version of Lolita, which was proving to be a controversial subject at the time. For the Hollywood movie, a panel of child psychology and sex expert were called in to discuss the movie’s potential harm, and it was ultimately passed. Maniac received no such expert testimony, despite being controversial for similar reasons (abnormal sexual content and the potential for it to inspire copycats) and presumably costing the same standard fee to process. Not only that, but the reason for the movie’s ban was supposedly due to its misogynistic content. A panel of 4 people made that decision. The panel was comprised of 3 men and one woman. The woman was the sole dissenting voice, whose opinion was that the film would be acceptable in its cut form, the men disagreed. Chauvinism at its best.

Thankfully, the BBFC is a little more enlightened in its post-James Ferman days, and the only cuts appear to be due to sexual violence (the only true trigger for censorship nowadays, along with harm to animals and children). Of course, there is a nice Blue Underground disc available on region 1, uncut.

TRAILER

Rating:

Tags: banned in the uk, gore, slasher, tom savini

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