Maniac (1980)

Joe Spinell was a character actor who knew all the right people, appearing in movies such as The Godfather, Taxi Driver and Rocky.  He often played sleazy characters, sometimes thugs or corrupt cops.  William Lustig had come from the porn business when making adult films was still risky and, in many parts of the United States, illegal.  Caroline Munro, in contrast, had a long career starring in b-movies that required here to wear next to nothing, but was a well-known actress and a former Bond girl.  Her husband had some money and was willing to fund Spinell and Lustig's low-budget serial killer movie if Munro got a part.  In addition, they managed to get Tom Savini, who had been noticed for his work on Dawn of the Dead, as their special effects artist. 

For all intents and purposes - and what the critics seemed to think, some of them forming opinions and writing reviews of the movie without ever seeing the whole thing - Maniac was originally considered the misogynistic, depraved low-budget thriller its poster made it out to be.  What it is instead is a disturbing, often frighteningly realistic take on a serial killer, with Spinell starring and having written a script which, according to Savini, was heavily toned down by the time the movie got made.  While some of the critical drubbing was definitely due to the snobbishness of people like Gene Siskel, it may have also been that Maniac was still way too close in time, and details, to real killings that had happened in New York in the 1970s.  

Frank Zito (Spinell) is a loner living in a one-room apartment in Brooklyn.  It is not shown that he has any actual job, but his usual nighttime activities involve murdering women and, often, couples he finds engaged in intimate activities.  His concentration is on the women, taking their scalps and nailing them to mannequins that he has collected, often talking to them in an internal monologue.  He is well aware that the police are searching for him, but part of him believes that it is one of the mannequins in his apartment that gets out and commits the crimes.

After seeing photographer Anna D'Antoni (Munro) in Central Park, he tracks her down.  However, it's not to kill her, but rather because he's interested, and to his surprise so is she.  Despite his other activities their relationship seems to develop normally.  Unfortunately, the impulses that drive him do not diminish, despite Zito's attempts to control them. 

Siskel famously left the theater to write down his diatribe of shock and outrage at the point where a man gets his head blown off by a shotgun.  It is a classic scene, staged by Savini (and with Savini as the victim), and I'm sure it is quite shocking if one is unaware of how the gag is done.  Even more effective is a nurse (Kelly Piper) being pursued by Zito in a deserted subway station in the middle of the night.  While Lustig may have had to earn his early money doing pornography he had no lack of directorial skill and relies heavily on suspense rather than dwelling on the kills, which may have been a bit much for most audiences due to Savini's insistence on trying to be realistic when he could. 

The two most disturbing elements of this movie are Spinell's performance and the setting itself.  Frank Zito is a man that looks like any normal person one would pass in a city, running a restaurant, working on a telephone line or patrolling the streets.  He is haunted every step of the way by his childhood and by persistent guilt about the murders, and since the audience follows him rather than the usual protagonists it gets to know what a narrow line he is walking.  The character is part Ed Gein and part David Berkowitz, both of whom were similarly unassuming in real life that committed worse crimes than Zito.  

The setting, New York in 1979, helps lend a needed atmosphere to Zito's activities.  The movie was filmed on 16mm stock, thus is grainy to begin with.  Add the dark, crumbling environs of the Big Apple at the time and, whether Spinell or Lustig intended it, there is cinematic language paralleling Zito's mental state.  Much of this, from the subway stalking to the shotgun murder, was filmed quickly in order to get the crew out before police showed up, as Lustig could not afford permits for most of the location shooting.  Despite Munro's husband pitching in and both Spinell and Lustig contributing, the movie was made for only a few hundred thousand dollars, and costs were kept even lower by Lustig casting many of the adult film actresses he knew to fill the roles.  

At the time many of the accusations toward Maniac was that it promoted violence toward women.  The ad campaign, more than the movie, contributed to that perception.  The poster shows a man, from the waste down, holding a large knife and woman's scalp, and he is either significantly endowed or rather excited.  Kiosks were set up in New York to show some of the bloodier kills, without context, from the movie in order to entice horror fans to see it, despite the fact it's more of a psychological thriller than a horror film, although some horror tropes are thrown in at the end.  The character of Frank Zito, however, seems to have no real hatred toward women.  This is not a misogynistic film set up to find ways to torture and murder naked or half-naked women, like Bloodsucking Freaks.  Surprisingly, there is hardly any overt sexual element to it, despite what is shown on the poster.  It is one of the few exploitation films of its type not featuring at least one or two rape scenes for titillation.  There is barely any nudity at all, and what is there is matter-of-fact rather than sexual. 

Daria Nicolodi was originally supposed to play the role of D'Antoni, so Munro was a latecomer to the production.  Still, it is nice to hear her actual accent for once, and to see that she is a passable actress despite constantly being dubbed over.  Her part is more of a plot device, and it is about the point of her arrival that the movie begins to unravel a bit.  Either Spinell or Lustig went for a more artsy ending than the film needed, confusing the audience with supernatural elements that are more Zito's imagination than anything else, although the final shot is good one to end on.  Despite a messy ending it is still a worthwhile film, and one that does have both artistic and cinematic merit despite the efforts of a few moral guardians to convince the public otherwise. 

Maniac (1980)

Time: 87 minutes

Starring: Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Kelly Piper, Abigail Clayton

Director: William Lustig