Maniac

Dir: William Lustig

1980

****

Maniac is one of the famous 1980s horror films included in the ‘video nasty’ panic where such films were seized and confiscated in the UK under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959. I’m not a big fan of censorship in general, I wouldn’t let a child watch it of course but it is up to adults what they watch – within reason. However, there is no defending the level of nastiness featured in William Lustig’s infamous psychological slasher. It is either your type of film or it isn’t, I wouldn’t say I love the brutality of the film but I do love a good horror and I’m fascinated by some people’s need to horrify an audience. That said, there is a lot of craftsmanship and superb independent film making that went into this film that I whole-heartedly admire. If you’re going to make a nasty film, then you should make it really nasty, so I can’t help but congratulate everyone involved. I love how loathed the film was and how risky the shoot was, even though the funding aspect was brilliant. The original budget of the movie was $48,000 in cash. $6,000 of which came from Joe Spinell which was part of his $10,000 salary from the movie Cruising that he recently completed before filming began. $12,000 came from Andrew W. Garroni and the rest ($30,000) came from William Lustig which was from their profits in the adult film business. The three of them put all that money into a stock market account and the amount grew to $135,000 as production continued. It was British producer Judd Hamilton who came up with the rest of the money (around $200,000) to complete the movie as part of a condition that his then-wife, Caroline Munro, would be cast as the heroine. It is fair to say this was a project of passion – although everyone wanted to make money. Frank Zito (Joe Spinell) was abused as a child by his prostitute mother, and as a result becomes a serial killer who murders young women, scalps them and attaches their hair to mannequins. After he awakens from a nightmare about killing a couple on a beach, he dresses and leaves his apartment towards downtown Manhattan into Times Square. When Frank is randomly invited inside a hotel by a prostitute (Rita Motone), she kisses him before he abruptly strangles and scalps her. He then returns home and adds the hooker to his mannequin collection by placing her clothing and nailing the scalp onto the mannequin; he tells himself that beauty is a crime punishable by death. Sometime later, he dresses again and takes a collection of weaponry with him, including a double-barrelled shotgun, before leaving. He drives around Brooklyn and the Queens area, where he finds a couple exiting a local disco and parking near the side of the Verrazano Bridge. When the boyfriend (Tom Savini) starts up the vehicle after his date sees Frank spying on them, Frank kills the couple with his shotgun and then adds the woman to his mannequin collection. After seeing his recent crime on television, he talks to himself and the mannequins as he sobs himself to sleep. During the next day in Central Park, Frank follows a photographer named Anna (Caroline Munro) after she takes a photo of him and a little girl riding a bicycle in the distance. At night, Frank sees a nurse (Kelly Piper) leaving the Roosevelt Hospital, where he then stalks her inside subway station and murders her with a bayonet before adding her to his mannequin collection. Days later, Frank heads to Anna's apartment and is invited inside by Anna after she recognizes him from the photo she took of him. Upon him asking her out to dinner, he later shows her a photo of his mother who died in a car crash years ago. A few days later, Frank is invited by Anna to a studio during a photography session, and she introduces one of her models Rita (Abigail Clayton) to him. After seeing the two talking and holding hands, he steals Rita's necklace and leaves. Later that same night, he arrives at Rita's apartment to give her her necklace, before then attacking her and tying her to the bed. Frank begins disorientingly talking by addressing her as his mother and stabs her with a switchblade before scalping her for his collection. One night, Frank takes Anna on a date and they stop by a cemetery to visit his mother's grave. While laying some flowers beside the headstone, Frank begins to mourn over one of his early victims and attacks Anna. He chases her around the cemetery, but she hits him in the arm with a shovel before fleeing. He hallucinates his decomposing mother attacking him from the grave. He runs back to his apartment, where he sees his mannequins suddenly coming alive. They mutilate Frank with his weapons before ultimately tearing off his head. The next morning, two police officers break into Frank's apartment and sees Frank lying dead on his bed; he has committed suicide. As the officers leave the apartment, Frank's eyes suddenly open. Gritty horror films shot without permits aren’t generally made by the same people who are clever enough to open stock market accounts. The more I know about the film the more I love it, although what I love most about it all is what happened behind the camera. Joe Spinell’s performance is probably one of the greatest to feature in a horror film and the legendary Tom Savini provides some of the most graphic make-up of all time. Years later, Savini was quoted as saying that he might have went "too far" with the gruesome special effects. The infamous sequence where Frank murders the boyfriend (played by Savini) was loosely inspired by the "Son of Sam" murders committed by serial killer David Berkowitz, who shot people in parked cars with a .44 Special revolver. Savini received the role for the male victim because he had already made a cast of his own head, so it saved money. His head was filled inside with leftover food and fake blood. Since Savini used live ammunition for the scene, he immediately threw the shotgun into the truck of a waiting car driven by an assistant Luke Walter, who was a friend of Spinell, to avoid being caught by the police. Because they would only have one chance to film the scene where his character gets shot, Savini decided that he should be the one to pull the trigger. He said it felt a little weird shooting the dummy he had created of himself in the face. The dummy used for the exploding head scene had been used extensively by Savini for effects in Dawn of the Dead two years before. After its use in Maniac, it was so saturated in fake blood and gore that it was decided to retire the dummy (which Savini had named "Boris"). According to Savini, the dummy was locked in the trunk of the car used in the shotgun scene and sunk in the East River – a little piece of horror legend lost forever. I loved the guerrilla style of film making used by Lustig, it felt like a cross between Psycho and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer but far more gritty and realistic - apart from the mannequins coming to life obviously but then the realism only made the fantasy that more effective. Spinell starred in some of the greatest films ever made but due to his stature and look he was always given the same roles. Maniac was his big lead performance and the one he will probably always be known for. Serial killer isn’t an easy role though, and he played it perfectly. It is okay not to like Maniac but you can’t deny just how perfectly it was put together, it is the perfect low-budget independent film, as well as the most effective video nasty.