Synopsis
I warned you not to go out tonight.
A psychotic man, troubled by his childhood abuse, loose in NYC, kills young women and takes their scalps as trophies. Will he find the perfect woman in photographer Anna, and end his killing spree?
1980 Directed by William Lustig
A psychotic man, troubled by his childhood abuse, loose in NYC, kills young women and takes their scalps as trophies. Will he find the perfect woman in photographer Anna, and end his killing spree?
Joe Spinell Caroline Munro Abigail Clayton Nelia Bacmeister Denise Spagnuolo Billy Spagnuolo Kelly Piper Sharon Mitchell Rita Montone Hyla Marrow Tom Savini Linda Lee Walter James Brewster Tracie Evans Carol Henry Louis Jawitz Candace Clements Diane Spagnuolo Kim Hudson Terry Gagnon Joan Baldwin Jeni Paz Janelle Winston Randy Jurgensen Jimmy Aurichio Frank Pesce Andrew W. Garroni Taso N. Stavrakis William Lustig
O Maníaco, Maníaco, Elmebeteg, Ο Μανιακός, 매니악, Maniac: Kvindemorderen, Маньяк, Маніяк, Maniaco, Maniak, Tên Điên Giết Người, 疯子, 瘋子, マニアック, Maníac, Manijak
Mannequin obsessed psycho killer Frank Zito and the sleazy essence of ’80s New York, in all of of its filth-infested glory.
Bill Lustig and Joe Spinell create a deeply disturbed portrait of a deranged man turned serial killer who, as a way of coping with the childhood abuse from his mother, savagely murders young women—scalping them in the process and adding the freshly cut headpieces to his mannequin collection.
Maniac’s mannequin finale is one of the genre’s most memorable, seedy NYC is it’s very own character, and Tom Savini’s in full tilt boogie mode here. No matter how many times I see Maniac or how many much time passes between viewings, I can’t help but be hit to the core…
There’s something just a little too real, too visceral, too exploitative about Maniac that makes me unsure whether to give it 5 stars or 1 star. As is their nature, many horror movies succeed in scaring or disturbing me, but there’s an extra component here that almost makes me feel uncomfortable about even finding some form of entertainment in watching Frank Zito’s violent escapades as his mental state helplessly and pitilessly deteriorates. Though not unlike Norman Bates (or, hell, even Rorschach for that matter) in terms of backstory and overall psychosis, Frank feels cruelly & unsettlingly human; we see much more of him in his intimate, vulnerable moments of unstable emotional distress and reliving of past trauma than we do as…
the movie that people seem to think todd phillips made. psychologically reductive/silly/incoherent i think but as an exercise in grimy new york texture and the matter-of-fact trauma and repulsiveness (both in the quiet, lonely interludes and bursts of misogynistic violence) of an alienated man inflicting his wounds on others it is frequently genuinely shocking and scary. also the score goes hard as hell.
The only thing better than joe bobs corny ‘yankee’ joke was the time I was in a bar in Texas and a bunch of good old boys heard me order my whiskey with no ice and said “what are you doin’ here, yankee?” To which I looked around surveying the land and replied “just wanted to see what we won” as I took my shot and said good day. They tipped their caps and bought me my drink. I think that’s what the kids used to call a mic drop. They all had guns, but I had no fear and the better joke. We had 5 drinks together.
Anyways, Maniac is amazing and sweaty Joe Spinell was a gift to humans.
Takes a special kind of guy to keep August sweating deep into the early winter. Takes a special kind of movie to show that guy blowing up a dude's head with a shotgun through a windshield.
More than once this movie made me feel like a child watching a horror movie on TV after I was supposed to be asleep. That feeling where you're knowingly giving yourself nightmares. I had assumed that feeling was gone forever. It's nice to catch up with old friends.
Probably one of, if not the, most traumatic VHS cover art to come crawling out of the video store era. Absolutely fucking T/R/A/U/M/A/T/I/Z/E/D me as a kid and when I finally saw it, boy did it ever live up to the promise of terrible things inside. Because you know, a lot of them didn’t. A lot of them talked a big game on the cover, but when they dropped trou the actual movie doesn’t live up to the hype. This one though…this one is just the epitome of absolute sleaze!
New York in 1980 was just fucking disgusting and it’s crazy how that was so attractive and revolting at the same time to kid me. It looked awful, but I…
Aww, what a sweet tale of love and desire in pre-Giuliani NYC. You know, I would have searched this out earlier if I had known this was a romance movie.
In all seriousness, this was so marvelously deranged. How funny is it that hottie Caroline Munro was just so enamored with Joe Spinell (who, according to the credits, is a real Renaissance man)?! Maybe she just really dug his stylish haircut? That must be it because Michelle seemed to adore it too!
Man, Spinell plays the psychotic sleazeball so well. It was disturbing at times.
The Fx, courtesy of Tom Savini, were absolutely topnotch. That shotgun scene..
Fan-fuckin'-tastic!
Cruisings filthy little brother. looks like a surplus/excess material to Friedkins masterpiece but there's worse than feeling like a side dish to such a wickedly crafty shark. Joe Spinell is fantastic and i appreciate the mixture of rough edged NYC texture / end of a decade swan song while taking a psychotic soul (kinda) serious.
on a sidenote it's unbelievable Tom Savini's head getting split open by a pump gun and Spinell's face getting yanked off is available first on Amazon and now Netflix here in Germany nowadays, a country in which the whole film was on the index until 2019. wonders will never cease.
So dreckig wie intensiv. So irritierend hautnah wie handwerklich präzise. So hart wie schwer umstritten. Immer noch. Und deswegen zurecht ein kleiner Genre-Meilenstein, der tief in seelische Abgründe und den Verfall des New Yorks der 70er Jahre blickt. Ein im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes unangenehmer Film - und eben Joe Spinells Lebenstraum, der als Autor, Produzent und Maniac wahrlich alles gibt.
Ist gerade noch ungeschnitten bei Amazon Prime erhältlich, vermutlich aber nicht mehr lange.
I love this more each time. One of the grimiest films ever. Joe Spinell is amazing. The gore is some of the best I've seen. Mannequins are fucked up enough without the added 'elements' here. Funny in its depravation, but equally disturbing. And always leaving me needing to take a bath afterwards. Ick!
”You can trust me. You know you can.
There’s no reason to run away.”
A lot of slasher films rely on a mostly unseen killer, who can seemly be anywhere and do anything to the point that it ceases to be interesting. What I liked about this is that we spend the majority of time with the killer, who’s just a “normal” guy with some serious mental issues. We see how he jimmies doors and locks and goes about his day to day killings all while chanting “Why do I do these things?”
Joe Spinell does a fantastic job of being both disturbing and menacing. The makeup and gore are really well done, especially considering the obvious low budget.
It’s…
If there was ever a film that I wanted to describe as crusty… this would be it. One of the sweatiest, and most depressive pieces of exploitation sleaze that I’ve seen in a while.
Also, the car scene was probably one of the greatest scenes I’ve seen… ever.