ManiacCop

Maniac Cop (1988)

Note: I couldn’t really write this review without some spoilers. So if you hate that sort of thing then stop reading and watch the movie. And yes I’m going to recommend the movie… Hey is that a spoiler too?

There is a killer that puts his victims at ease by dressing up as a cop. Detective Frank McCrae is trying to track down the identity of the killer before things get too bad on the streets. He comes to believe that a cop is responsible for the crimes, but when his evidence points to a supposedly dead detective named Cordell he isn’t sure what to do. But by the time he has the evidence to prove it is Cordell, the Maniac Cop is on his trail. Toss in a storyline with a young officer (played by Bruce Campbell) that is framed for the killings by Cordell and you have yourself a pretty good movie.

And that is what Maniac Cop is, a pretty good movie. The story is filled with lots of action and keeps things moving along at a nice pace. There is a nice mix of mystery as we aren’t sure right away who is the Maniac Cop is. For a short time (literally 5 minutes) it looks like the Campbell character might be the killer. But that is cleared up pretty fast. When the Cordell character is finally introduced we get a nice flashback that establishes what happened to turn him from a hero into a psycho killer. It actually makes sense.

Oh and I wanted to mention another thing about the plot that I really dug. Cordell seems sort of indestructible when he is first introduced as the Maniac Cop. But it turns out that he isn’t invulnerable to things. The fact is that he is just so messed up that he doesn’t care about getting hurt more. And the movie even mentions that he might be wearing a bulletproof vest, though the headshots aren’t explained well… Still from start to finish I found the movie to be entertaining. At the end of the day that is all that matters to me when I sit down to watch a horror flick like Maniac Cop.

I wanted to talk about the special effects for a minute. The design of the killer is pretty basic stuff and until the very end we don’t get to see much of it. But I found that what we do see works really well. Of course it doesn’t hurt that Robert Z'Dar is kind of an odd looking character himself. We can just chalk that up to great casting on the part of the director. The kills are sort of tame. We get a lot of shots of bodies lying around, but not too much killing on screen. And what we do see is obscured in most cases by dark lighting or happens behind a door where we only get to see just a bit of what is going down. While I appreciate a well-staged scene those looking for a gore fest will be disappointed.

And speaking of disappointed I thought that I should mention something. In the past I’ve heard a few fans rip on Maniac Cop because it was directed by William Lustig. It seems that many fans though they were going to get a flick like Maniac when they went to watch this one. These are two really different flicks. Maniac is a character piece with an incredible performance from it’s star and Maniac Cop is a goofy slasher flick. I like both of them, but one needs to have reasonable expectations, which is why I mentioned this.

So anyway I do recommend Maniac Cop. And the best way to watch it is on the new Synapse Blu-Ray edition. Not only is the picture and sound killer, but they have several special features that I watched and enjoyed. You have an interview with the Maniac Cop himself Robert Z'Dar as well as another with genre favorite Tom Atkins. Both of these are worth checking out. Check out their website at http://synapse-films.com/

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer