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MANIAC

Bill Lustig's 1980 slasher entry, MANIAC, is a seminal film in the slasher film sub-genre. Dirty, gritty and grimy, with a totally out of control lead performance by Joe Spinell, this little film delivered on everything the advertising promised. Lustig used that as a mission statement of sorts - far too many of these films promised outrage but offered only mild discomfort - and he packed MANIAC with some of the most graphic murders ever committed to celluloid. MANIAC might not be the best slasher film and, most certainly, not the most original but the film has an undeniable power. It's a rabid dog on a leash about to snap and there's no hope for escape once you've entered it's poisonous, soul crushing gravity.

Placed in it's proper historical context, it's easy to see how MANIAC could ruffle more than a few feathers during it's original release. Coming a brief three years after the Son of Sam murders, MANIAC posits a fat, incredibly unbalanced killer waging a war against his own demons on the mean streets of New York. In the film's most infamous scene, Zito mounts the hood of a car and viciously kills the two lovers inside, blasting the man in the face with a shotgun. It's not hard to see the connection. Berkowitz, much like Frank Zito, had obvious mother issues. While Zito was abused by his mother in the past, Berkowitz never knew his mother. She had given him up for adoption, triggering a deep sense of rejection that lasted his entire life. Coupled with his feelings of inadequacy - Berkowitz wrote to his father: "The girls call me ugly and they bother me the most" - Berkowitz could find no relief without killing those he felt were responsible for his misery. Zito, similarly, punishes innocent women for his past rejection, his mother simply did not love him the way a mother should love a son. The connection between Zito and Berkowitz must have struck the audience in 1980 hard and left them cold.

MANIAC also has similarities with another 1980 slasher film, Joseph Ellison's DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE. Both feature unbalanced killers dealing with maternal abuse who seek comfort in the cold-hearted murder of various beautiful women. While Zito stabs, throttles, and strangles his victims to death, the killer of DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE, Donny - played with understated conviction by Dan Grimaldi - chains his victims up in a steel-lined torture chamber in his home, using a flame thrower to burn them to death. Both keep memento moris. In Zito's case, it's the scalps - which he places on mannequins - and clothing. In Donny's case, it's the charred remains of his victims. Both feature finales in which the victims rise up in imagined retaliation for their murders. Neither are particularly convincing in their psychology but neither have to be. Both exhibit a hatred for women and both feel no remorse for their victims or criminals. DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE is the better of the two films but lacks MANIAC's psychotic pull. Whether or not MANIAC sought inspiration from - or was inspired by - DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE is unknown to me. DON'T was released in March while MANIAC was released in November. It would seem unlikely that Lustig would create a film so similar as a mere coincidence.

The fact that MANIAC has survived the decades with it's reputation intact is a bit perplexing. The Tom Savini-supplied special effects have not aged particularly well - though much better than FRIDAY THE 13TH - but are still strong enough to leave an impression. All of the performances are b-film caliber. Thinking back, it's hard to pick a single thing that MANIAC does well or, at the very least, something that it does better than it's contemporaries. Regardless, something about the film simply will not fade with the years. No matter it's faults - and it does have faults - MANIAC remains a strong film. It's mix of graphic violence and misogyny is tough to shake and the tone of the film, married with the strength of it's imagery, has an uncanny ability to unnerve even the most seasoned horror viewer.

If anything, MANIAC survives as an interesting fossil from a time when movies didn't have to cater to every demographic known to man. This is not a film for mass consumption. It does not want to be loved by the under 25 crowd nor does it play ball to appeal to the over 35 crowd. It simply exists, for better or worse, in a class all by itself, a film so rough and uncompromising that it should have "abandon all hope" scrawled on the DVD cover.

Highly recommended.