Dissecting Slashers: Maniac (1980)

Cody digs into a slasher with Tom Savini gore FX.

BACKGROUND

William Lustig was a big fan of Italian genre movies – in fact, some of his earliest work in the entertainment industry (aside from the porno films he directed under a pseudonym) came when he worked as a production manager on the crime film The Rip-Off, a.k.a. The Squeeze, and the horror movie Inferno, which famed Italian directors Antonio Margheriti and Dario Argento shot in Lustig’s home turf of New York City. So it’s no surprise that when Lustig was given the suggestion that he should make a movie that was like “Jaws on land,” he decided to make it a serial killer movie, drawing inspiration from Italian giallo films for the murder sequences. He even decided to bring in special effects artist Tom Savini to handle the gore after seeing the work he did on George A. Romero’s classic Dawn of the Dead – which also happens to have been produced by Argento.

The movie ended up being called Maniac, but Lustig took the project to character actor Joe Spinell when it was still just a three word concept: “Jaws on land.” Spinell was getting some high profile work at the time, having appeared in The Godfather and its sequel, Taxi Driver, Rocky and Rocky II, but that didn’t put him off the idea of working with Lustig on a low budget independent film. He was given complete control over creating his character, the serial killer, while Lustig devised the murder scenes. The fundraising was a joint effort, but Lustig and Spinell had only raised a $48,000 budget by the time filming began, figuring that if they were already working on the movie, other investors would get on board as they went. They ended up raising $135,000 total, largely thanks to the husband of lead actress Caroline Munro – who was a last minute replacement for Daria Nicolodi, Argento's wife and Suspiria co-writer, who had been cast but had to drop out.

Munro had co-starred with Spinell in the 1978 movie Starcrash, but he’s not the one who told her about Maniac. She learned about the movie while making an appearance at a Fangoria Weekend of Horrors convention, where Savini was also a guest and brought it up to her. That worked out for Lustig and Spinell, as they might not have been able to make Maniac the enduring, infamous horror film it ended up being if it hadn’t been for the involvement of Munro.

SETTING

Most slasher movies are set in isolated locations or sleepy small towns, but that’s not the case with Maniac. This one takes place right in the heart of New York City – and this is before the clean-up efforts that would transform the city over the next couple of decades. This was NYC at the height of its crime-ridden sleaziness, which brings a unique look and feel to the film, especially when combined with the low budget aesthetic and how disgusting the lead character is. There are moments in Maniac when it feels like you’re getting coated with slime and grime just by watching the movie.

Some scenes branch out into isolated locations, the opening sequence even takes place on a beach (a nod to the film’s “Jaws on land” origin), but terrible things also take place in apartment buildings that have bystanders right outside, a hotel that primarily caters to prostitutes and their johns, and even a subway station that is empty of any human beings other than the killer and the victim.

KILLER

As mentioned, the killer in this movie, a fellow named Frank Zito, is absolutely disgusting. Spinell plays him as a sloppy, sweaty mess, and for a large portion of the running time it’s difficult to imagine that Frank would ever be able to function in society in any way. What he likes to spend his time doing is wandering around the city at night, looking for couples to kill or women to attack. Any female he finds attractive is in danger, as it seems that becoming aroused throws him into a homicidal rage. It all has something to do with his mother, as Frank will say that he had a beautiful mother who was taken from him in an automobile accident when he was younger... but an accident might not have really been what took her out of his life. Frank did not have a good mother. She used to put cigarettes out on his chest, leave him alone when he was afraid of being alone, or even lock him in the closet. But Frank adored his mom anyway and resented that she would have sex with men for money. Those men didn’t love her. Frank loved her. 

Now, when he’s home alone, Frank even talks to himself as if he’s either having a conversation with his mother or channeling her. He’s never truly alone, however, because he keeps mannequins in his apartment that he dresses up, placing the scalps of his victims on their heads and then talking to them as if they are living beings.

There’s a pattern to the early stretch of the movie: Frank will kill somebody, then we’ll see him hanging out in his home, being crazy in a less violent fashion. Then he’ll go out and kill somebody else. Then we’ll see him at home again. The pattern is broken when he realizes his picture has been taken by a photographer Anna D'Antoni – the role that was going to be played by Nicolodi, but ended up being played by Munro. There’s a shift in Frank’s character at this point. As he befriends Anna and even starts to pursue a relationship with her, we discover that he is capable of hiding his madness well enough to have seemingly normal social interactions. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before the facade crumbles and it becomes clear just how dangerously insane Frank really is.

Spinell (who was known to be a mama’s boy himself) gives a great, fearless, utterly convincing performance as this character, making him so believable that he’s often difficult to watch.

FINAL GIRL

There’s more to the Anna character than there would have been if she had been played by Daria Nicolodi, since Caroline Munro only joined the cast (and helped boost the budget) under the condition that the Anna role be expanded... but it still takes her a long time to show up. She’s not even glimpsed until almost the 35 minute mark, and doesn’t really become a character until about 49 minutes into the film’s 88 minute running time. It’s a good thing she does, because she brings a lot of life and energy into a movie that, up to the point she starts delivering her lines, has been quite a dark and disturbing journey. A relentless onslaught of violence and insanity.

The most beautiful woman Frank has seen since his mom passed away, Anna talks to Frank about her art, goes on a dinner date with him, and is charmed enough by him that she’s open to going on more dates with him – and possibly even being in a relationship with him. She’s a friendly, open person... but when she realizes what kind of person Frank really is, she also proves capable of defending herself and escaping from this maniac.

VICTIMS

This isn’t a film where you get to spend a lot of time getting to know the victims. Most of them only show up long enough to have a quick moment or two before Frank shows up to murder them. There’s a couple sleeping on the beach who only have a conversation about firewood before they get killed. There’s a prostitute who needs to turn one more trick before she’ll be able to pay her rent – and unfortunately, the john who shows up is Frank. A young woman needs to get home to her boyfriend, but she has decided to hook up with another guy in a parked car before she goes home... And Frank makes sure she’ll never get home. A pair of nurses have a quick post-work chat before Frank kills the one who rides the subway instead of having someone pick her up from work. A model has the misfortune of having Frank witness her latest photo shoot. He visits her apartment that night.

We don’t know these people, we only know what happens to them in the final moments of their lives.

DEATHS

Tom Savini was there to provide the special effects, so of course there are murders in Maniac that are an unforgettable, bloody spectacle. There’s a throat slitting, a bloody garroting, a strangulation, an impalement with a bayonet, and some scalping. The most famous kill in the movie comes when Frank breaks away from the standard slasher M.O. and picks up a shotgun so Savini can drop in a shotgun blast to the head – repeating the exploding head trick that he did so well in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Making this death even more special is the fact Savini himself plays the character who gets his head blown apart.

There’s also a dismemberment that may only happen in Frank’s mind, but it would have been right at home in Dawn of the Dead or the later Day of the Dead.

CLICHÉS

Maniac isn’t packed with the usual slasher movie clichés, but that doesn’t mean they’re entirely absent. The scenes of couples getting murdered on the beach or in a parked car are classic slasher set-ups – as are the moments that indicate that sex = death and the chase sequence through a deserted location, which is a subway station in this case. There’s also a visit to the classic horror story location of a cemetery toward the end. The killer having mommy issues also isn’t exactly uncommon.

The parked car hook-up is the scene that comes off as being the most cliché, and yet that’s one that’s directly based on real world events: the scenario was inspired by the crimes of the serial killer known as the Son of Sam, who had terrorized New York just a couple years before Maniac went into production. The Son of Sam used to walk around looking for people sitting in parked cars and would open fire on them with a .44 revolver, just like Frank opens fire on this couple with his shotgun.

POSTMORTEM

When Maniac was released in all its bloody, unrated glory in 1980, critics tore it apart for its graphic violence, with the popular Gene Siskel admitting that he walked out after watching just twenty minutes of the movie – though that didn’t stop him from reviewing it. It was refused a classification by the British Board of Film Classification and banned from receiving a video release for a couple decades... so, of course, viewers were drawn to check out the movie to see what all the controversy was about. It made over four million dollars at the box office, which was a great return on investment for the people who put money into it. The film immediately earned a cult following in the horror community, and its success gave William Lustig the chance to go on to make bigger movies (including the Maniac Cop trilogy).

Maniac may be as well-known as the movies in the big horror franchises of the ‘80s, but it’s not obscure, either. The Tom Savini gore and Joe Spinell’s performance ensured that it would stick around and continue to be referenced and celebrated by genre fans as the decades went by. It was even remembered well enough that it got a remake in 2012.

This one makes for an uncomfortable viewing experience, but it’s also essential viewing if you’re into slasher movies.