261 Days of Horror, Day 94: Maniac
Jul. 3rd, 2007 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiManiac. 1980. Directed by William Lustig. Written by Joe Spinell and C. A. Rosenberg. Distributed by Blue Underground.
As I've mentioned before, there are few films that really disturb me. Plenty can startle me with jump scares (cheap or otherwise) or gross me out. But only a handful actually leave me with a feeling of dread after I've watched them. Maniac, the barebones 1980 film best known for inspiring that damned song from Flashdance*, disturbs the hell out of me. It's not because of the complicated plot, certainly; 90% of Maniac consists of our titular character either stalking and killing women, or sitting in his room in a schizophrenic haze. The remaining 10% focuses on the "love story," and there's not that much going on there.
What makes it creepy is a combination of the brutal, graphic kills, and the unmasked nature of the killer himself. Frank Zito isn't a masked automaton like Michael or Jason, a hidden killer like Pamela Vorhees or The New York Ripper, or a misshapen goon like Freddy. He's a guy who looks just like someone you might pass on the street. So when he kills women, he connects with the audience in a way that other kills are never meant to. Watching him kill, like watching Henry kill in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, doesn't allow the audience to disassociate from him the way we've come to expect in slashers.
The plot's as simple as can be: Frank Zito is a loner with severe schizophrenia who lives in an apartment filled with mannequins**. He periodically goes out and kills women in horrible ways, and then scalps them, adding their scalps to his mannequins. Eventually, he starts dating a woman, but that doesn't stop him from killing. At the end of the movie, he loses it completely, and either believes he's attacked by his mannequins, or really is attacked by them. That's it.
Okay, in fairness, we get at least something of an explanation for Frank's motives: he was abused by his mother while growing up. But that was the same motivation given to Kane in See No Evil, an equally plotless and violent movie. Maniac clearly has other things driving it (other than, you know, the complete and utter lack of Kane).
Part of it, of course, is the brutal, effective effects of Tom Savini. Savini's long been a master of gore, but his work in Maniac is amongst his best work, with every graphic stabbing coming across as utterly realistic. Perhaps the most memorable death in the entire movie actually features Savini (as "Disco Boy") dying onscreen, with Zito blasting his brains out with a shotgun. It's filmed in slow motion, and never once seems anything but real (this is the scene that Gene Siskel -- an otherwise professional film critic -- allegedly walked out on, putting him into the Joel Siegel "unprofessional fucktard" box for a day***). Although Dawn of the Dead and the original Friday the 13th are the movies on which Savini gained his reputation, Maniac, to me, is the movie that best (and most horrifyingly) shows his talents. If anything, it might be the one film in which he goes too far, as the sheer realism of the deaths is one of the many tools that removes the usual escapist disassociation audiences get to experience.
William Lustig, directing his first non-porn movie, also gets a lot of the credit, as he keeps a low-budget, borderline-amateur feel going throughout; it creates the closest I've seen to the urban legend of the snuff film*****. In perhaps his finest directorial moment******, we see Zito in an extended scene stalking an unnamed nurse through an abandoned subway station and into a restroom. It's a scene that was "paid tribute to*******" in the gas station sequence of High Tension, and is one of the better suspense sequences in the history of the genre. The character-driven moments -- including Zito romancing a photographer******** -- aren't quite as exciting, alas.
I can't say, even after multiple viewings, if I like Maniac or not. It's not a good film (certainly), but it's that rare, genuinely transgressive movie that forces the viewer into a truly uncomfortable position of empathy (if never sympathy) for the killer, while still keeping the murders themselves brutal and unforgivable. The late Joe Spinell's performance (off his own story, with a screenwriting assist from C.A. Rosenberg) is perfectly on-target, and his charisma carries the film during those sequences that aren't relying on Savini's effects. Maniac isn't a film for everyone, but fans of the slasher genre do owe it to themselves to see it, if only for the huge influence it continues to hold over the genre today.
*Really. So when you hear, "She's a maniac, maniac, I knoooooo-ow, and she's dancing like she's never danced befoooore," assuming that by "dancing," they mean, "killing." And that by "she," they mean, "Joe Spinell."
**None of whom look like Kim Cattrall.
***In fairness, this story could well be apocryphal, and Siskel, unlike the late Siegal, proved that he wasn't a moron plenty of times in his life****.
****Also, in case you were wondering, I started this review before Siegal died. But dying doesn't make him any smarter, and stomping out of the Clerks 2 screening is still, sadly, the defining moment of his career.
*****Yes, they are urban legends, dammit! See Snopes.
******As we'll discuss tomorrow, this is damning with faint praise, as Lustig has had few fine directorial moments.
*******Hackspeak for "swiped."
********Played by Caroline Munro, the first woman ever killed onscreen by James Bond.
As I've mentioned before, there are few films that really disturb me. Plenty can startle me with jump scares (cheap or otherwise) or gross me out. But only a handful actually leave me with a feeling of dread after I've watched them. Maniac, the barebones 1980 film best known for inspiring that damned song from Flashdance*, disturbs the hell out of me. It's not because of the complicated plot, certainly; 90% of Maniac consists of our titular character either stalking and killing women, or sitting in his room in a schizophrenic haze. The remaining 10% focuses on the "love story," and there's not that much going on there.
What makes it creepy is a combination of the brutal, graphic kills, and the unmasked nature of the killer himself. Frank Zito isn't a masked automaton like Michael or Jason, a hidden killer like Pamela Vorhees or The New York Ripper, or a misshapen goon like Freddy. He's a guy who looks just like someone you might pass on the street. So when he kills women, he connects with the audience in a way that other kills are never meant to. Watching him kill, like watching Henry kill in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, doesn't allow the audience to disassociate from him the way we've come to expect in slashers.
The plot's as simple as can be: Frank Zito is a loner with severe schizophrenia who lives in an apartment filled with mannequins**. He periodically goes out and kills women in horrible ways, and then scalps them, adding their scalps to his mannequins. Eventually, he starts dating a woman, but that doesn't stop him from killing. At the end of the movie, he loses it completely, and either believes he's attacked by his mannequins, or really is attacked by them. That's it.
Okay, in fairness, we get at least something of an explanation for Frank's motives: he was abused by his mother while growing up. But that was the same motivation given to Kane in See No Evil, an equally plotless and violent movie. Maniac clearly has other things driving it (other than, you know, the complete and utter lack of Kane).
Part of it, of course, is the brutal, effective effects of Tom Savini. Savini's long been a master of gore, but his work in Maniac is amongst his best work, with every graphic stabbing coming across as utterly realistic. Perhaps the most memorable death in the entire movie actually features Savini (as "Disco Boy") dying onscreen, with Zito blasting his brains out with a shotgun. It's filmed in slow motion, and never once seems anything but real (this is the scene that Gene Siskel -- an otherwise professional film critic -- allegedly walked out on, putting him into the Joel Siegel "unprofessional fucktard" box for a day***). Although Dawn of the Dead and the original Friday the 13th are the movies on which Savini gained his reputation, Maniac, to me, is the movie that best (and most horrifyingly) shows his talents. If anything, it might be the one film in which he goes too far, as the sheer realism of the deaths is one of the many tools that removes the usual escapist disassociation audiences get to experience.
William Lustig, directing his first non-porn movie, also gets a lot of the credit, as he keeps a low-budget, borderline-amateur feel going throughout; it creates the closest I've seen to the urban legend of the snuff film*****. In perhaps his finest directorial moment******, we see Zito in an extended scene stalking an unnamed nurse through an abandoned subway station and into a restroom. It's a scene that was "paid tribute to*******" in the gas station sequence of High Tension, and is one of the better suspense sequences in the history of the genre. The character-driven moments -- including Zito romancing a photographer******** -- aren't quite as exciting, alas.
I can't say, even after multiple viewings, if I like Maniac or not. It's not a good film (certainly), but it's that rare, genuinely transgressive movie that forces the viewer into a truly uncomfortable position of empathy (if never sympathy) for the killer, while still keeping the murders themselves brutal and unforgivable. The late Joe Spinell's performance (off his own story, with a screenwriting assist from C.A. Rosenberg) is perfectly on-target, and his charisma carries the film during those sequences that aren't relying on Savini's effects. Maniac isn't a film for everyone, but fans of the slasher genre do owe it to themselves to see it, if only for the huge influence it continues to hold over the genre today.
*Really. So when you hear, "She's a maniac, maniac, I knoooooo-ow, and she's dancing like she's never danced befoooore," assuming that by "dancing," they mean, "killing." And that by "she," they mean, "Joe Spinell."
**None of whom look like Kim Cattrall.
***In fairness, this story could well be apocryphal, and Siskel, unlike the late Siegal, proved that he wasn't a moron plenty of times in his life****.
****Also, in case you were wondering, I started this review before Siegal died. But dying doesn't make him any smarter, and stomping out of the Clerks 2 screening is still, sadly, the defining moment of his career.
*****Yes, they are urban legends, dammit! See Snopes.
******As we'll discuss tomorrow, this is damning with faint praise, as Lustig has had few fine directorial moments.
*******Hackspeak for "swiped."
********Played by Caroline Munro, the first woman ever killed onscreen by James Bond.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-04 01:13 pm (UTC)I've tried watching movies where he's more of a headliner, and, other than Dusk 'till Dawn, I have not been able to finish them.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-04 11:07 pm (UTC)