MANIAC COP - 1 2 3 ...and maybe 4

Good movie sequels are pretty rare. Maniac Cop 2 is a great example of a memorable follow-up that delivers more than the first. I've rewatched all three Maniac Cop films to double-check my favouritism, and also learned that work has started on a possible Maniac Cop 4! Let's rewind and look at the whole maniacal saga...

In 1980, director William Lustig struck video nasty gold with his low-budget horror Maniac - the tale of a deranged serial killer (actor Joe Spinell certainly looked the part) who assaults, kills and scalps his female victims. This was the kind of slasher that got everyone upset, because women were victims, stalked at length and then realistically scalped (courtesy of Tom Savini's bloody FX). Graphic, controversial, usually censored and therefore a hit on dodgy VHS.

MANIAC COP
(1988, USA)

After shooting the bloody cop thriller Vigilante (1983), Lustig combined his police and horror genres. Maniac Cop introduced a street cop turned random serial killer, with a short sword hidden in his night stick. As the murders continue, the public get spooked by anyone with a badge. The resulting subversive scenario - society losing faith in the police force - is typical of producer Larry Cohen's work (the It's Alive trilogy, The Stuff). Another twist is that the couple investigating the case (played by The Evil Dead's Bruce Campbell and Laurene Landon) get implicated as the killers, because the main suspect is dead - or is he... Tom Atkins (The Fog, Night of the Creeps) is the unlucky detective trying to unravel the mess.

While the killer is being tracked down in a city in panic, we also get his backstory and meet everyone involved - it's all very plot heavy. Also Bruce Campbell's trademark humour is forcibly subdued here. Lustig cashes in on his Maniac reputation, but pulls back on the violence, traded for pumped up action scenes. There's a nighttime car chase where one of the vehicles is on fire, and a superb and highly dangerous-looking crash. It's all fun enough, but the sequel would takes everything up a notch.

Maniac Cop has been released twice on DVD in the US, first remastered widescreen (above) and also recently in a Synapse Special Edition.

MANIAC COP 2
(1990, USA)

The sequel generously kicks off with a repeat of the dynamite climax of Maniac Cop. As the cop continues to kill, the police discover they've been after the wrong man. Maniac Cop ups his game by teaming up with another serial killer in a diabolical plan to avenge himself, (and conclude some unfinished business left hanging in the first). Bruce Campbell is back, but Robert Davi (the Bond baddie in License To Kill) and Claudia Christian (sensational as stripper turned alien killing machine in The Hidden) are new on the case - Davi plays a disillusioned hard-boiled detective, Christian a street-smart lawyer.

There follows a series of astonishing action scenes, all expanding on the stunts in the first film. They all benefit from being shot at night. A car chase where one vehicle has its tyres ripped off, causes sparks to fly off the bare wheel rims - the entire car chase is spectacularly lit by the sparks alone. There's a gob-smacking runaway car stunt, with a stuntwoman handcuffed to the steering wheel, from the outside! Then there's a huge slow-motion brawl, while Maniac Cop is on fire, but just carries on fighting, letting his victims catch fire as they try to defend themselves - a prolonged series of astonishing stunts...

It's action-horror! Way before Jeepers Creepers, there was a unique sub-genre of car chase action, starting in 1970s horror movies. Death Race 2000 mixed elements of gory horror into a futuristic road race. Race With The Devil piled on the atmosphere, with satanists racing and chasing their victims along America's backroads. The Car was possessed by the Devil, bringing sacrifice to the highways. Later The Hitcher (1986) put the 'stalk and slash' into a road movie. Not to mention the Phantasm films adding high speed hearse action, including the incredible barrel roll stunt in Phantasm III.

Anyway, the 'serial killer team-up' sub-plot gets a little annoying, but the story regains a sense of purpose towards the climax, which brings a spectacular and logical closure that the first film lacked. I rate Maniac Cop 2 over most Friday the 13th and Halloween sequels in the category of most entertaining 'undead killer'.

I've given up waiting for a Special Edition of Maniac Cop 2 - it isn't even on DVD in the US, and no sign of happening in the near future. Instead, I bought the UK region 2 DVD (above) - the 1.33 aspect ratio is a little tight, but it's a clear good-looking transfer. Two original trailers are included - the one made specifically for home video has snappier music and a sharper choice of money-shots. The classic movie trailer tagline is "You have the right to remain silent... Forever... Again". As you can see, the video covers misquote this, and just repeated the tagline from the first film, for fear of looking silly.

MANIAC COP 3: BADGE OF SILENCE
(1993, USA)

My hopes were way too high for this sequel, and it was by all accounts a troubled production - the trailer credits another director as well as Lustig. (There's a couple more clues in this interview on Slasherama). It's still a very watchable film, but the story is more of a cop thriller, with Maniac Cop only really appearing in a feeble retread of scenes from Halloween II, stalking around a hospital. It's not until the final action sequences and the spirited climax, when it begins to look anything like a Maniac Cop film.

The film really belongs to Robert Davi who holds everything together. He also has a great supporting cast, including Julius Harris (another Bond baddie, but from Live and Let Die), Robert Forster (Vigilante, Alligator, The Black Hole, Dragon Wars) in an uamusing cameo, Doug Savant (now a regular in Desperate Housewives), Bobby Di Cicco (no longer the fresh-faced star of Spielberg's 1941) and Jackie Earle Haley (The Bad News Bears, Damnation Alley - just before he took a long break from acting).

Maniac Cop 3 is available on DVD, once again only fullframe in the UK, and the cover art is uninspiring (the grittier VHS artwork is displayed above).

While Googling the trilogy, I hit the news that Maniac Cop 4 is now on the boards, as William Lustig and Larry Cohen have now regained the sequel rights. Check here for any more news and lots more Maniac Cop stuff. It's time for me to start getting my hopes up again...

EPIC BATTLE

Now that ruled! 

THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE (1973) - go in, or don't!

THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE(1973, USA)

In the 1970s, writer Richard Matheson set upon the foundations of gothic horror, with a mission to bring them up to date – placing a vampire on modern American streets in the influential The Night Stalker TV movie, and every other classic monster in the series that followed. In Matheson’s earlier novel, I Am Legend, he had vampires who could be explained scientifically rather than supernaturally. In his novel Hell House, he tackled a haunting from two directions, with psychics and scientists…


Four investigators come to “the Mount Everest of haunted houses” in order to solve its mysteries, even though the last attempt meant death for almost all of them. This is a similar plot to The Haunting (1963), which is far more critically acclaimed, but I much prefer Hell House, perhaps because I saw it in the cinema. The two titles are easily confused - Shirley Jackson’s book, The Haunting of Hill House, was shortened to the movie title The Haunting, while Richard Matheson’s novel Hell House had its title lengthened to The Legend of Hell House for the movie adaption. Are we clear?

The Legend of Hell House also beat The Exorcist into the cinema by six months in the US, they both have possessions, bad language and demons with sexual motivations. Hell House is far tamer, however and it’s structure is closer to Spielberg’s Poltergeist, while being far more serious in tone. There’s no comic relief in this old dark house…

One of the team is temporarily possessed, and having a good experienced actress in the role makes Pamela Franklin’s performance an interesting comparison to Linda Blair, who was obviously a newcomer to the movies when she appeared in The Exorcist. Unlike the period costume horror films of the Hammer Studios, here was a British-made film in a modern setting. The devilish plot meant that here was one horror that kept on being re-released as long as movie double-bills survived in the seventies, which is how I got to first see it - in 1976 on a double-bill with The Antichrist an Italian Exorcist riff.

Hell House hits the ground running – there’s a brief set-up, then the team arrive at the house and they’re inside before the titles are over. The building is shrouded in fog (for days on end!). The movie is thick with atmosphere, created by the intense but largely restrained performances, aided by the distorting lens of wide-angle cinematography, and backed by Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson’s electronic soundtrack. This superior accompaniment is more like vibrations than music. The two composers were from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and in 1963 it was Derbyshire who engineered the first extraordinary Doctor Who theme there, based on Ron Grainer's composition.

Though the reputation of the house is regularly refered to as a being a haven for murder and debauchery (loosely based on the stories about satanist Aleister Crowley), the film suffers by having no physical evidence lying around. Presumably to avoid censorship hassle, the resulting film is almost too tame, but still garnered an 'X' certificate in the UK. It’s creepy, violent, sexually violent, but tastefully pulls its punches. I think it’s still strong enough to please a modern audience. For a stronger version of the story, you'll have to seek out a copy of Matheson's book.

The small cast are marvellous, though Roddy McDowall’s American acting style is far broader than the rest of the cast, who successfully underplay. McDowall was just at the end of his many Planet of the Apes roles. Here he plays the only survivor of the previous incursion into Hell House, twenty years earlier. Another former child actor (her first role was in The Innocents) was the criminally underused Pamela Franklin, who made several cult horror films, like And Soon The Darkness, and then briefly returned to TV roles after the ridiculous The Food of the Gods. Pamela has the toughest part as an over-sensitive medium.


Clive Revill was better known as a comedy actor, as Dirk Bogarde’s sidekick in Modesty Blaise, and as a Russian aristocrat in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Here he excels as the project leader, designer of a machine that he hopes to cure the haunting with. Revill is still working, mainly in voiceovers – one of his famous early offscreen roles being the original Emperor Palpatine’s voice in The Empire Strikes Back. The lovely Gayle Hunnicut plays his wife – her other great horror role was Eye of the Cat.

I think this is easily director John Hough’s best film, over The Watcher in the Woods, and Twins of Evil, though more recently American Gothic (aka Hide and Seek) showed he’d still got it. The mostly ingenious special effects are all in-camera, apart from some eerie optical work for the manifestation of ectoplasm.

20th Century Fox’s DVD widecreen transfer restores the vibrant colour of some of the sets, particularly the sinful deep reds of the bedrooms. It’s never looked better, and there’s a 4.0 audio track too. It's available in the UK and US.

Recently, some of the striking camera compositions were recently plundered and copied for Edgar Wright’s superb pastiche trailer for the Tarantino and Rodriguez’ Grindhouse intermission, for the made-up film Don’t!. A keenly-observed and funny homage.

In 2013 - we visited the house used for the exteriors of Hell House - more photos here...

KILLDOZER joins the TV Movies update

A genre peculiar to the 1970s were the made-for-TV movies which had a supernatural horror storyline. Killdozer was so successful that it span off into the world of comics (see the entire comic adaption here).
I've expanded my original entry on the TV movie horror genre and logged which titles are now on DVD. Read it here at TV Movie horror - THE NORLISS TAPES (1973) and more.

Couple of Things I'm Watching

I don't really have too much to say here of late, so I will keep you in tune with some good things to check out on the web. A couple of things I'm watching are Godzillathon and Street Fighter The Later Years.

Godzillathon is a review of every Godzilla movie ever done. It's done by James Rolfe aka The Angry Video Game Nerd formerly know as The Angry Nintendo Nerd. This series is being done through his own website called Cinemassacre.com. I have been a big fan of AVGN stuff for a while now and I like hearing his insights into the world of Godzilla. Check it out here is part 1 of 17, and more to come.

Another pretty funny YouTube channel is Collegehumor.com. They have their own website and also post many funny things that will keep you occupied when you're bored at work at home. They are nothing groundbreaking but a lot of the stuff they do would make for good skits on SNL or MadTv. I think some of the stuff they do is well done and makes me laugh. One such series is called Street Fighter The Later Years and chronicles all the Street Fighter characters if they were still alive in modern day times. The series also throws in a lot of good inside jokes for fans who used to play the game all the time, like I did on the SNES. It's broken into 9 parts and is worth checking out, again I will put up the first episode of the series:

Well thats all I have for now. Check out those series and check back for updates.

THE VICTIM (2006) - superior Thai horror

THE VICTIM
(2006, Thailand, Phii khon pen)

This popular Thai horror has just been released on DVD in the US, and a rave review in Video Watchdog prompted me to finally watch my Thai DVD, which was easy enough to follow despite the lack of subtitles.

Bright young Ting helps the police by acting as the victim in murder re-enactments, staged for the press in the hope of gaining further information on the crimes, while adding drama for the press and TV news. But as she researches her roles more thoroughly, Ting begins to connect with the victims, saying a prayer and lighting incense at each murder scene. Unwittingly, she starts to accumulate their unhappy spirits who are waiting for justice to be done...


While The Victim has many startling shock moments and effective creep-outs, the early scares have a tinge of comedy - in line with the popular Thai horror comedies like the Buppah Rahtree films. There's also some successful comedy moments in the non-scary scenes, like when Ting's acting proves so convincing in a reconstruction, that the public pile in to beat up the actor playing her 'murderer'. The scares are still numerous and solid, ranking this as a far scarier and inventive Thai horror film than most, especially the laborious, badly-acted Thai slashers, like the Art of the Devil series. I was also very impressed with the central plot twist, which the publicity cleverly avoids hinting at...

Overall, this is very satisfying, and director, Monthon Arayangkoon, is now forgiven for inflicting the patchy monster movie Garuda (2004) on the world. The Victim is different enough to be set apart from other Eastern horrors, with superior acting and cinematography, and appropriately creepy camera moves subtly enhancing the scares. My only reservation is that some of the more ambitious effects look a little too digital, but maybe that was a budgetary limitation.

The end credits are at pains to show supposed evidence of spirit photography lurking in several shots in the film. The 'making of' documentary takes the phenomenon seriously, interviewing the cast and exploiting the same superstitions as the previous Thai horror hit Shutter (2004).


By the way, is it me or did the grey ghosts and scary posters from The Victim have an influence on the publicity art for the recent US remake of Pulse, with more dark grey hands reaching out of the darkness...

David Kalat's very positive review in Video Watchdog reports that the US DVD (from Tartan) has poorly translated subtitles and, more damagingly, no translations at all for the numerous headlines and signs. This is a shame because The Victim is easily one of the country's scariest offerings.

Instead, I'm considering getting the Korean DVD release, which usually have very good English subtitles. Though when shopping around, buyers should beware of the many other films, from both East and West, that are also called The Victim.

Follow Up

kind of a follow up to my blog from yesterday...