Middle-aged Frank Zito (Joe Spinell) suffers with major parental abandonment issues due to his mother being killed in a car accident when he was a child, yet also harbors unfulfilled love and need for her. Tortured by memorizes of childhood abuse at the hands of his slatternly mother, Frank frequently moans like a needy toddler, crying out for his mommy to comfort him while he promises to be a good boy. He is loath to leave his tiny flat, because he knows that once he is on the streets, his sublimated anger and loneliness takes the wheel and the savage serial killer is unleashed to stalk the streets of New York City at the end of the disco era, murdering and scalping women during a killing spree that makes the headlines and holds the city's women in abject terror.
Zito tacks his victims' bloody scalps to the heads of manikins that he keeps in his apartment as company and bed mates to whom he vents his warped thoughts with the intent of "preserving" them in hope that they will never leave him.
Barbie's Beauty Center, eat your heart out.
A small ray of hope appears when Frank is photographed in a park by Anna (Caroline Munro), a professional photographer. Frank strikes up a chaste relationship with her, and she listens when he expounds on his philosophies regarding art as a means of preserving its human subjects, and during their time together Frank reveals that he is capable of healthy human interaction and connection. But while a charming romance blossoms, Frank remains driven by his demons when not with Anna, so his murderous activities continue. In the end, madness proves more powerful than attraction, as Frank attempts to kill Anna. She escapes and presumably alerts the authorities, so Frank makes his way back to his apartment, where his harem of manikins suddenly come to life and wreak vengeance upon him by dismembering him on his bed and tearing off his head. Two cops arrive on the scene and find the manikins in their usual positions around the flat, and an intact but gut-stabbed Frank seemingly dead on his mattress. When they exit the apartment, Franks eyes pop open... And the credits roll.
Arguably the most infamous and controversial of the first wave slasher films of the 1980's, MANIAC was the gore movie that every gorehound kid wanted to see, due to its heavy rep for being the bloodiest movie of its time. Sporting practical effects by Tom Savini, who had so solidly delivered the goods in the apocalyptic DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) and FRIDAY THE 13th (1980), the film was pretty much designed as a showcase for ultra-explicit charnel house spectacle, and in that department the film certainly put its money where its mouth was. Released unrated, which relegated the film to inner city grindhouses, sleazy drive-ins, and "arthouse" cinemas, MANIAC wastes zero time in getting down to the business of killing. We get two murders before we even get to the opening credits, a slashed throat and a garotting, to be specific, and for the next fifty minutes we are taken along on an odyssey of stalking and murder as conveyed from the killer's insane point of view. Veteran character actor Joe Spinell co-wrote the screenplay and came up with the basic story, and in doing so he gives himself the opportunity to enact what is no doubt his darkest role. Instead of the usual faceless killing machines that overran the screen during the '80's slasher boom, Frank Zito is examined in intimate, tragic detail, and though we are clearly shown that he is a monster, one cannot help but understand and feel for this man who was destroyed as a child. This certainly is not a pleasant film by any stretch of the imagination, but it's absolutely worth seeing for Spinell's convincing turn as the sweaty, heavy-breathing, infantile Zito, a man whose murder spree is motivated not by sexuality, but by the most warped need for female nurture.
I first saw MANIAC when I was sixteen, when it was part of one of the legendary Scream All Night festivals at Norwalk, Connecticut's Sono Cinema during its wild and woolly days, an event that was my first all-night movie marathon. (If memory serves, I drifted off to sleep somewhere around 5am, but I did see all of MANIC and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.) As previously mentioned, MANIAC was the gore film to see that year, and if all that one wanted was bloody nastiness, one would not be disappointed, but the film in many way exemplified all of the complaints that detractors levied against the entire slasher sub-genre. Though more competently crafted than the majority of its brethren, MANIAC really has no plot to speak of until Caroline Munro enters the narrative, and even then she' barely a presence. It's just kill after kill after kill, most in loving and lurid closeup, with a spectacular head being blown off at point blank range with a double-barreled shotgun.
Other than the effects, the film's saving grace is Spinell's performance as Frank Zito, an indelible part that will make you want to take a shower after the end credits roll.
MANIAC is a grubby, squalid effort that I am surprised to find that I appreciate more today, after seeing it in its entirety for the first time in 43 years, and I do recommend it for all scholars of the genre. That said, it's quite unpleasant, unrelentingly humorless and depressing, and isn't what I would consider fun. Having seen it again for this refresher, I can see no reason to return to it in future. Also, while its effects were quite shocking in their day, they have since been outdone many, many times over, so if seen for the first time from the perspective of nearly 45 after years after the fact, newcomers can be forgiven for asking just what the big deal was.
Oh, and look for 1970's porn mainstay Sharon "Mitch" Mitchell as a nurse. I did not know who she was back in 1981, but I sure as hell know who she is now. I recognized her on sight, thanks to her cute face that is famously offset by her delightful big nose. She is always welcome on my screen.
The adorable '70's porno legend Sharon Mitchell, as Nurse #2. She's in the film for less than a minute, but I perked up when she appeared.
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