Post by Bartwald on Apr 2, 2005 2:11:49 GMT -5
MANIAC COP (1988)
DIRECTOR: William Lustig
CAST: Bruce Campbell, Tom Atkins, Robert Z'Dar, Laurene Landon, Richard Roundtree
GRADE: 6,5/10
One more movie – next to Terminal Invasion – I rented lately ‘just because of Bruce’. It’s pretty strange, actually: everyone knows that he had his share of stinkers and yet there’s always this primitive call that makes almost all of us, horror fans, go visit some nearby Blockbuster and fill our backpacks with ‘everything Bruce’. Scary! Uncanny! But true.
Maniac Cop, however, ain’t bad choice for the many fans of Bruce. Lots of cheese in it (some of it intentional), lots of bad acting (you can’t even be sure about Bruce’s own) and a one-trick-pony plot (a policeman starts butchering the innocent citizens but it’s not gonna be easy for him to complete the task as Bruce Campbell’s character is on The Ones To Be Butchered list, too) are all present but on the other hand there’s plenty of good stuff here, as well: the haunting score (the highlight being the prison scenes showing how the Cop got his reasons to go all-out Maniac), the cool uncertainty whether the Cop is alive or dead or a zombie, some suspenseful scenes (not at the beginning maybe, when the no-names are obligatorily biting some dust, but later when the threat’s on Bruce and his girlfriend). Also, let’s not forget one of the meanest and ugliest movie villains this flick gave us: he’s big, he’s scary, he’s a uniformed policeman, he’s suspected of being a zombie – can anyone do better than THAT? Uh, yes – it’s enough to get the monstrous Robert Z’Dar to play the part, and thankfully that’s what happens here. A perfect choice! As good as choosing Harrison Ford for the Indiana Jones role or Al Pacino for that Corleone sissy or – shut up all you purists! – Eliza Dushku for the Wrong Turn girl. Yeah!
Where was I? Oh, right – Maniac Cop. The script was written by the King Of Horror Cheese – Larry Cohen but the director is William Lustig; that’s important ‘cause it so happens that almost all good Larry Cohen movies are directed by NOT Cohen himself. Lustig does well with this one (was it his first feature? I think it was), keeping the tone of the movie rather straight which makes it easier for us to believe that the Cop may be human, after all. Having such a hilarious premise as this one here would usually tempt the director to go cheesy all the way – the Evil Dead way. Lustig’s wiser, though: he may love The Evil Dead as much as we all do but for his movie he decided to take a different route and make a quasi-mystery tale, while we can only spot him massaging his cheek with tongue on rare occasions. And it works! Sure more money would make this film more polished and would provide the actors with more takes for their not-so-good scenes but it still has plenty of charm – and saying something like that about a movie that’s called Maniac Cop speaks for itself, I guess. Besides, it’s one more title that defines the moviemaking of the eighties. See, be thrilled, experience history
DIRECTOR: William Lustig
CAST: Bruce Campbell, Tom Atkins, Robert Z'Dar, Laurene Landon, Richard Roundtree
GRADE: 6,5/10
One more movie – next to Terminal Invasion – I rented lately ‘just because of Bruce’. It’s pretty strange, actually: everyone knows that he had his share of stinkers and yet there’s always this primitive call that makes almost all of us, horror fans, go visit some nearby Blockbuster and fill our backpacks with ‘everything Bruce’. Scary! Uncanny! But true.
Maniac Cop, however, ain’t bad choice for the many fans of Bruce. Lots of cheese in it (some of it intentional), lots of bad acting (you can’t even be sure about Bruce’s own) and a one-trick-pony plot (a policeman starts butchering the innocent citizens but it’s not gonna be easy for him to complete the task as Bruce Campbell’s character is on The Ones To Be Butchered list, too) are all present but on the other hand there’s plenty of good stuff here, as well: the haunting score (the highlight being the prison scenes showing how the Cop got his reasons to go all-out Maniac), the cool uncertainty whether the Cop is alive or dead or a zombie, some suspenseful scenes (not at the beginning maybe, when the no-names are obligatorily biting some dust, but later when the threat’s on Bruce and his girlfriend). Also, let’s not forget one of the meanest and ugliest movie villains this flick gave us: he’s big, he’s scary, he’s a uniformed policeman, he’s suspected of being a zombie – can anyone do better than THAT? Uh, yes – it’s enough to get the monstrous Robert Z’Dar to play the part, and thankfully that’s what happens here. A perfect choice! As good as choosing Harrison Ford for the Indiana Jones role or Al Pacino for that Corleone sissy or – shut up all you purists! – Eliza Dushku for the Wrong Turn girl. Yeah!
Where was I? Oh, right – Maniac Cop. The script was written by the King Of Horror Cheese – Larry Cohen but the director is William Lustig; that’s important ‘cause it so happens that almost all good Larry Cohen movies are directed by NOT Cohen himself. Lustig does well with this one (was it his first feature? I think it was), keeping the tone of the movie rather straight which makes it easier for us to believe that the Cop may be human, after all. Having such a hilarious premise as this one here would usually tempt the director to go cheesy all the way – the Evil Dead way. Lustig’s wiser, though: he may love The Evil Dead as much as we all do but for his movie he decided to take a different route and make a quasi-mystery tale, while we can only spot him massaging his cheek with tongue on rare occasions. And it works! Sure more money would make this film more polished and would provide the actors with more takes for their not-so-good scenes but it still has plenty of charm – and saying something like that about a movie that’s called Maniac Cop speaks for itself, I guess. Besides, it’s one more title that defines the moviemaking of the eighties. See, be thrilled, experience history
