Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick (and the case against)
There’s gross.
And then there’s sleazy.
And then, there’s William Lustig’s Maniac.
Filmed guerilla style in NYC at the peak of that city’s post-apocalypse period, Maniac is so repulsive in look and content that you can practically smell it through the celluloid.
Critics immediately threw a fit over the film’s content, with Gene Shalit notoriously storming out of a press screening after the infamous sequence in which a shotgun blast removes Tom Savini’s skull from his body. Although Maniac was never officially classified as a ‘video nasty’ in England, such was the film’s reputation that British police officers seized the prints upon arrival.
Despite (or because) of Maniac’s reputation, the film has still become a milestone in the horror genre and a rite of passage for fans working their way through the major works. No less than Stephen King trumpeted the film’s genius in a recent appearance in Eli Roth’s History of Horror.
But for our own Justin Harlan, a man who knows his way around a trashterpiece, Maniac has never lived up to the hype. But maybe this time, he’ll get the appeal. But first, let Justin explain why the film never struck his fancy.
Justin
Many whom dislike Maniac seem to have a hard time with the sleaze and grime of the film. What’s bizarre for me is that sleaze is something I often enjoy heavy doses of. I mean, I run a podcast called Grindhouse Messiah and used to be the editor-in-chief of the blog on The Grindhouse Channel. Clearly, sleaze isn’t much of a turnoff. However, the supposedly great performance from Joe Spinell and the overall story of this one never resonated with me.
My love of horror is well documented, but my love of sleaze has mostly developed over the past decade. Prior to that time, I’d likely have never even watched Maniac. However, a few years back, I checked it out, excited by the prospect of seeing what lots of voices I respect in genre film considered an exploitation classic. Perhaps it was the hype or perhaps something else, but I was highly let down.
Make no mistake, I wasn’t disappointed in it being “too tame” or anything like that. It’s far from tame. It’s greasy, dirty, and earns all of the claims that it’s one of the grimiest slashers of the era. In fact, the idea that it somehow escape being officially named a Video Nasty is further proof of the BBFC’s seemingly haphazard decisions as to what films made their list and what films did not. This film certainly deserved that distinction, despite somehow skating through.
I simply didn’t find the film that interesting. That’s the rub for me. Even if it seems like it would make sense for me to love, I didn’t. With this in mind, our Two Cents Second Chance Theater gave me opportunity to dive into this dirty 1980 grindhouse slasher again… hopefully with different results…
Next Week’s Pick:
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension baffled audiences when it was first released in 1984, but it has steadily accumulated a massive cult following in love with every corner of its gonzo sci-fi world, a cult following that still holds out hope they might one day see Buckaroo and his crew of Hong Kong Cavaliers battle the World Crime League.
One person not holding out hope for such an event: our own Austin Vashaw. He’s long disliked the film, but for our final installment in Second Chance Theater, he’s ready to give it one more shot.
Buckaroo Banzai is available to stream on Amazon Prime.
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!
The Rewatch
I will first reiterate that this film’s reputation as a beacon of grimy, gritty grindhouse sleaze is well earned. It’s dirty. It makes you feel the need to shower. It’s not pleasant in any way and it evokes a lot of unwelcome and unpleasant emotions. Unfortunately, it still isn’t for me.
That said, I appreciated Spinell far more this go around. He’s not only convincingly disgusting, but there is something going on beneath the surface that reels you in a bit as a viewer. He’s like a train wreck, you don’t want to look but you can’t look away. In fact, that same statement could be said about much of the film, in general.
As I watched this time, I found myself comparing the film to one with similar grit and a good deal of other comparables, Abel Ferrara’s Driller Killer. I find Ferrara’s film far more thematically rich and effective, but the favorable comparisons to it began to invade my mind as Lustig’s film progressed. Lustig’s NYC and Ferrara’s NYC both become characters in themselves and it isn’t lost on me that both used proceeds from XXX film directing to fund their projects. If I am going to continue to own Ferrara as a director I laud, I’ll need to spend more time with Lustig, as well.
I was far more glued to the film this time around, which leads me to believe that with a third watch — down the road — I’m likely to switch to the pro-Maniac camp. On this watch, I was more able to understand the praise that the film’s cult fans have piled onto it, even if I can’t fully get behind that praise yet.
In short, I guess what I’m trying to say is, “Bring on Third Chance Theater!” as I’m a few steps closer to understanding this film’s genius… I think. (@thepaintedman)
Our Guests
William Lustig’s Maniac isn’t an easy film to watch, or even rewatch. It is unrelentingly grimy and often upsetting. That said, it is far more interesting than many of its early 80s slasher brethren. The guerrilla-style location filmmaking on the streets of NYC lend it a sense of authenticity that adds to the film’s most unsettling moments — especially when those scenes are punctuated with Tom Savini’s incredibly effective special effects. Maniac is anchored by what might be Joe Spinell’s best performance, which swings from horrific to pathetic to, at times, eerily charismatic. I don’t revisit this movie often because, frankly, it’s not very fun. But it is fascinating in its attempt at walking the line between exploitation horror and psychological character study. Its most interesting moments are near the end, when the lines between reality and psychosis start to blur — those scenes almost play like a sad sack, outer borough prototype to the much slicker, better-dressed American Psycho. I wish there was more of that sort of thing throughout the film, cutting between the world as the killer sees it vs how it actually is. Without that, the first half of Maniac mostly wanders from kill to kill — and without any suspense as to the identity of the killer. This isn’t one of my favorite 80s slashers, or even my favorite Lustig film (that would be Maniac Cop), but there’s enough here to recommend it to fans of the genre. That said, it will be another few years before I look at it again. (@T_Lawson)
The Team
First of all, Trey, and people like Trey, the movie you are describing, the one that blurs the line between Frank Zito’s fantasies and his horrific, violent actions, is the Maniac remake with Elijah Wood in 2012. That film used its whole “whole movie is done in one POV shot” gimmick as a means to entrench you in the mind of the killer, so his hallucinations were woven into ugly reality. Heckuva film. Will never watch again.
Anyway, Maniac.
I wasn’t expecting much, admittedly, but there’s a tainted, ruinous heart at the center of this film that I think won me over. The first half is little more than a sequence of unrelated kills, and while the lack of characterization of any of the victims makes it less involving than more traditional slashers, Spinell’s performance is so committed, Savini’s gore effects are so effective, and the rancid beauty of late 70s NYC is so captivating, it still works.
And pretty much exactly when I started getting bored with it, Maniac shifts gears and pivots to an extended sequence involving Zito attempting to ignore his murderous impulses and engage with the sane, regular world. It’s such a wild tonal and stylistic shift that it should not work at all, but by this point Lustig has so thoroughly brought you into the killer’s skull, that you roll with it. I understand being so repulsed by the first half that you disengage from the film entirely, but to me the back-half transforms the film and gives it layers of sadness and depth that quite belie the dirt-cheap aesthetic. Not a pleasant film, at all, but a much more thoughtful and thought-provoking one than I expected. (@theTrueBrendanF)
Maniac isn’t subtle, artful, or endearing, but it certainly is effective, employing a guerrilla style approach that puts you in the shoes of both a murderous sleazebag and his unfortunate victims. I’m intrigued at Brendan’s note about Shalit’s reaction to the shotgun scene, which I thought was the most captivating and impressive shot in the film.
I was surprised to see that Joe Spinell has story and screenplay credits on the film, which actually struck me as a bit sad. Like he was self-aware enough of his ability to be repulsive that he wrote himself one of the most disgusting roles in film history (though he actually also kind of turns on the charm in the film’s weird last act, so there’s that).
It never actually even occurred to me that the development with Caroline Munro’s character was Frank attempting to be decent or normal or foster a healthy relationship; I just figured he was playing a longer game of cat and mouse. It’s an interesting reading that does lend a bit of tragic gravitas to what could easily be dismissed as trash.
I ultimately don’t like Maniac, and taken on its own I might be tempted to do just that, but Bill Lustig’s filmography of incredible work solidifies a simple truth. He’s one of the greatest exploitation directors of the 80s and 90s, and I can make out where Maniac fits in that landscape, even if I don’t think I’ll ever need to watch it again. (@VforVashaw)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3nHEOXoh7c
Maniac was recently re-released on Blu-ray with a new 4K restoration from Blue Underground. Jon Partridgereviewed the release for Cinapse, which you can check out right here!
https://cinapse.co/maniac-is-restored-and-unleashed-anew-by-blue-underground-blu-review-cb4d4914ef29
Next week’s pick: