Maniac is a 1980 horror film directed by William Lustig and starring Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro. The story follows a serial killer in the Bronx named Frank Zito who has mental issues regarding women following a checkered upbringing with his mother. This movie is a bit different in the fact that it puts you in the seat with the killer as we experience the movie from his POV and follow along on his path of blood and regret through New York City. It feels part psychological horror and part slasher film. Frank Zito (Spinell) is an interesting and complicated character and is more of a whiny, regretful, and completely unstable type of killer than he is a hulking killing machine, adding a layer of realism to the film and making him feel more like a serial killer than a slasher villain. I read that Frank Zito, and this story was loosely based on David Burkowitz and the Son of Sam murders that happened in New York City not 10 years before this film was made so that would make sense with the way the character is portrayed. This movie was made by William Lustig, who would go on to make Maniac Cop in the horror genre here a few years later but was primarily an adult film director up to this point in his career. Basically, every actor in this movie outside of Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro, so basically the 2 leads, were current or former adult film stars. This film is surprisingly more sexual in nature than it is played out on the screen though. Frank clearly has some twisted sense of sexuality regarding his mother and his love/hate relationship with her, I mean he sees her in every victim he claims and can’t get over her with any other woman he encounters when he’s bloodthirsty, or horny, or both, I’m not quite sure? But this movie leans more into visceral brutality and his twisted mental state than it does anything sexual, as we follow Frank around NYC as he collects the scalps of his victims and decorates the mannequins scattered around his apartment with them.
This movie is also another one of the master of practical effects, Tom Savini’s, projects. There’s a particular scene in this film regarding a head exploding following a shotgun blast that was all made courtesy of the magic of Tom Savini and it’s truly something to be proud for any era of practical effects and horror film making, let alone in 1980. This was made right at the cusp of the slasher movement as well, this was released the same year as the first Friday the 13th and the year after this Friday 2 as well as The Burning, The Prowler, and My Bloody Valentine were released. So pretty early on in the more brutal and violence filled horror movie movement that the 1980s were eventually built on, and as you can imagine it took a lot of flak for being so in your face at the time. This movie was labeled as misogynistic, senseless violence that caters to a small and twisted sector of the population and critics trashed it, people protested it, and some theaters even banned it upon its release. That all feels like a bit much to me, this is a movie for one, and for two it’s supposed to be a character study into the psychology of a weepy killer with severe mommy issues so of course we’re going to see women in a certain light in this movie if we’re looking at things as he sees and feels them. But this movie never tries to preach that Frank is right or that we should be siding with him through any of this, in fact I’d say it does quite the opposite as we see firsthand just how twisted his perception of reality is as he chatters with the mannequins around his apartment and how filled with regret he is over this senseless violence he keeps causing, but he just can’t help himself. Especially with how this movie ends, with Frank getting his comeuppance from his victims inside of his own mind, I don’t see this movie as just misogynistic violent garbage at all, and it certainly has its place among the violent, blood-filled slashers of the 80s to me.
If I had to nitpick some things I didn’t enjoy as much within the film itself, one would be the unbelievable and out of nowhere love interest between Frank and Caroline Munro’s character Anna. I guess that was meant to show another side of Frank, but it just felt very ham fisted and out of nowhere and I didn’t really care for their scenes together as much. One could also critique that this film got kind of rinse and repeat at moments as it started to seem like Frank was feeling bloodthirsty, he’d kill, he’d regret, and he’d go back and talk it over with his mannequins in his apartment, and I could entirely understand that complaint. It kind of worked for me though as it showed us as the viewers Frank’s grasp of reality slipping more and more as he was unable to keep up the facade and his bloodlust grew stronger and stronger. Frank had elements of real-life serial killers weaved into his character that I noticed along the way. He resembled the Weepy Voiced Killer with his regret and crying after the killings, the Son of Sam in the one scene specifically involving a couple and a shotgun blast to the face, and Edmund Kemper in a way as well with the severe mommy issues. Overall, this movie worked for me. It was effed up (especially for its time) but that made it what it was and kept me enthralled, and it took elements from slasher movies while feeling more like a psychological character study of a serial killer in New York than a slasher. It’s available to watch for yourself right now on Tubi and Pluto TV for free so go check it out!
