My first exposure to Maniac Cop was from a poorly edited TV version recorded on VHS many years ago. I didn’t know it at the time but there was quite a lot of talent involved in the film. Written by Larry Cohen, directed by William Lustig, and starring the dynamic duo of Tom Atkins and Bruce Campbell, this movie had no excuse to either be entertainingly bad or just plain awesome. I must have been much more forgiving in my younger years since Maniac Cop is clever at times and somewhat insulting at others.
Given the production year of the movie, I am fairly confident in saying that it was inspired in part by the ongoing Friday the 13th series. The titular maniac is a large, brutal man dressed up in a police uniform. He kills random people as they are walking home or driving. He can’t be killed by bullets. He kills for revenge at a past injustice. This all seems familiar, doesn’t it? As the bodies of innocent New York City citizens start piling up, Detective Frank McCrae (Atkins) believes the murderer is a cop to the chagrin of Commissioner Pike (Shaft!). The police believe Officer Jack Forrest (Campbell) to be the killer even though McCrae has doubts and instead investigates a former cop believed to be dead. Maniac Cop has a nice ring to it but Zombie Cop … that’s even better.
Maniac Cop is not a good movie. It reeks of 80s cheese attempting to capitalize on the slasher trend featured in the F13 or Halloween series. But since this isn’t a horror movie (at least it doesn’t come off as one), the undead-ish killer breaking necks or drowning them in cement surrounded in lower budget action scenes is odd. Given that the setting is the shithole of late 80s NYC, there perhaps is some commentary intended about police society or the willingness of people to trust a cop but if it’s there, it is very latent.
Given that this movie was a low budget affair, I can almost forgive some of the bland scenery and wax-on/wax-off facial scarring of the maniac, but there is no excuse to waste both Tom Atkins and Bruce Campbell, one who doesn’t show up until twenty minutes in and the other who is gone around the halfway point. The plot itself does not make much sense. The Maniac Cop kills random people but is really targeting the Commissioner and attempts to frame Forrest, yet still kills when he is imprisoned. And he stabs a cop yet apparently takes a coffee break and then decides to attack the woman handcuffed to the cop. And he is undead but not really … which wouldn’t explain how he can take a bullet with ease.
The acting ranges from pretty good (Atkins and Campbell) to pretty horrible (the crippled woman) almost effortlessly. The music by Jay Chattaway is really good with a haunting, yet simple, theme that would prevail in the following movies. And since horror is a non-issue (although that would help with the ridiculous plot holes), at least the action in the movie is pretty good with gunfights and car chases that you wouldn’t otherwise see in an uninspired slasher flick. There’s always the next one to make up for it. Oh wait …
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