Maniac Cop (1988)
In New York City, a waitress is attacked by muggers on her way home. When she seeks help from an officer on the beat, he breaks her neck. When the same officer (Robert Z’dar) commits further murders, Lieutenant McCrae (Tom Atkins) is assigned to investigate. He is told by his superiors to suppress eyewitness accounts that the killer is wearing a police uniform. However, he passes this information to a journalist, in an attempt to protect civilians. Ellen Forrest (Victoria Catlin), suspects that her husband Jack (Bruce Campbell) may be the “Maniac Cop”, as the press are calling him, and follows him to a motel, only to discover he is having an affair with fellow officer Theresa Mallory (Laurene Landon). Ellen is subsequently murder by the killer and Jack is arrested under suspicion of murder. McCrae believes Jack has been framed and speaks to Mallory, who can provide Jack with an alibi. Mallory is then attacked by the Maniac Cop while working undercover as a prostitute. McCrae and Mallory fight off the killer, who escapes mysteriously unharmed, despite being shot several times.
Maniac Cop is a great “high concept” idea, made at a time when the slasher genre was running out of steam and writers were striving for a new angle. The story is modest in scope and efficiently handled, especially the idea of an honest cop being thrown to the wolves for the sake of political expediency. Director William Lustig has previous experience with both gory slashers such as Maniac (1980) and gritty urban crime movies like Vigilante (1982). Unfortunately, the film’s ambitions are hampered by the budget. The various murders by the “Maniac Cop” are not that gory, apart from a prison flashback sequence. In one scene a cop is shot by a member of the public, who panics when they are pulled over while driving. The squib blows the entire blood bag out of the back out of their hat and as the stunt man falls to the ground you can see the electrical cabling coming out of their costume. Obviously, there wasn’t the budget to reshoot the scene, so it was left in despite its noticeable flaws.
Low budgets often go hand in hand with independent horror films. It often drives filmmakers to be very creative. However, sometimes a low budget can hamstring a film no matter how. The strongest aspect of Maniac Cop is the cast, who are all genre stalwarts who are more than comfortable with the hardboiled dialogue. The film also benefits from a very atmospheric score by Jay Chattaway, which has a memorable motif that is often played in an off-kilter fashion. The story, by genre veteran Larry Cohen, is well conceived but after spending time and effort setting the story up, there’s simply no money left for a satisfactory payoff. Hence Maniac Cop runs out of steam in the third act and has a somewhat weak ending. Perhaps the best thing that Maniac Cop achieves is laying the groundwork for a bigger budget and superior sequel that was made two years later.
