Maniac (1980)

A psychotic man, troubled by his childhood abuse, loose in New York City, kills young women and takes their scalps as his trophies. Will he find the perfect woman in a photographer, and end his killing spree?

Director:

William Lustig

Writers:

C.A. Rosenberg (screenplay), Joe Spinell (screenplay)

Stars:

Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Abigail Clayton

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Joe Spinell	...	Frank Zito
Caroline Munro	...	Anna D'Antoni
Abigail Clayton	...	Rita (as Gail Lawrence)
Kelly Piper	...	Nurse
Rita Montone	...	Hooker
Tom Savini	...	Disco Boy
Hyla Marrow	...	Disco Girl
James L. Brewster	...	Beach Boy (as James Brewster)
Linda Lee Walter	...	Beach Girl
Tracie Evans	...	Street Hooker
Sharon Mitchell	...	Second Nurse
Carol Henry	...	Deadbeat
Nelia Bacmeister	...	Carmen Zito
Louis Jawitz	...	Art Director
Denise Spagnuolo	...	Denise

Storyline

Frank Zito misses his mother, who was killed in a car accident years before. She was abusive to him, and made money selling her body, but Frank still misses her. He tries to keep her from leaving him, and reform her evil ways, by killing young women and putting their scalps on mannequins which he displays around his apartment. Photographer Anna D'Antoni takes a picture of him in the park, and he pursues and befriends her. Is she the one he has been looking for or just another mother wannabe?

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Plot Keywords:

extreme violence | serial killer | serial murderer | weirdo | psychotronic film | 

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Taglines:

You can lock your windows and doors...But you can't lock the madman out of your mind.

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Genres:

Drama | Horror | Thriller

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

6 March 1981 (USA)

Also Known As:

Maníaco

Filming Locations:

Hotel St. James, 109 West 45th Street, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$350,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Magnum Motion Pictures Inc.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

87 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film's distributor had a unique campaign to support its release in New York: mini-screen kiosks were set up in front of theatres that were showing the film in 1980 that had several minutes of uncut footage, including gory murders. However, the campaign backfired when Gene Siskel condemned it on both his regular TV reporting and "At The Movies", leading to a backlash against the film's violence and the cancellation of plans to have the kiosks used in such major markets as Chicago and Los Angeles.

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Goofs

The photo that Anna is developing - of Frank accidentally running into a little girl on a bike - is not the same as the distance she was from, when she first took it.

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Quotes

Disco Boy: You wanna meet me someplace?
Disco Girl: Where?
Disco Boy: The back seat.
[flutters eyebrows]

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Alternate Versions

The 2008 Korean DVD includes the uncut theatrical version, running nearly 88 minutes. However, even without Korean subs, the Korean title can clearly be seen above the original title.

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Connections

Referenced in The Cinema Snob: The Mutilator (2012)

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Soundtracks

Winter Love
Written by Don Armando
Performed by Don Armando's 2nd Avenue Rhumba Band
Courtesy of ZE Records

User Reviews

Soliloquies of the knife

Horror is most purely about the violent impulse that surges from behind the eyes, the mist it creates; a story can be anything. Here it's the simplest story, man goes crazy in the big city, unable to contain the impulse, the whole seen through his mist.

There's a trauma that haunts him we find out, his cramped apartment is the mind then that fixates on memory and dwells among the fragments. The walls are lined with old photos of women, mannequins are scattered around; objects of a dead representation that he hoards unable to let go.

Quite a bit more of that story is explained to us later on, not much interesting; Freudian stuff about a mother, a vengeful child who never grew. But there's nothing we can't know by just seeing him pace up and down in his apartment, muttering to himself.

There's later a human connection to a photographer girl who snaps a picture of him one day in the park. The scenario is completely forced, a stranger and complete weirdo knocks on her door one day and they're best friends within minutes. It's something a weirdo much like the character would imagine (or write about).

But it's an opportunity to get closer to the real source, put our finger on the pulse; she a photographer who also freezes life into image but she's able to let go of it and share it in the open, while it just drives him to madness. We see her fuss with her models during a shoot much like he does with his gruesome mannequins; but her fiction has life, playfulness.

There's of course the violence, though it doesn't cut like perhaps it did then. It's still bloody and vivid. But what makes it powerful in its niche is the air of desperation around it, the whole film an internal monologue carving its garbled madness on the body of the night.

New York looks suitably barren, from the time before the makeover when people would walk down streets as bleak as in this film to see movies like it in dingy fleapit cinemas down 42nd street. The film is from that time when horror could still unsettle with the thought that somewhere in the same city, deranged souls very much like the character skulked around with a camera having horrible thoughts like this.