Maniac (1981)

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Maniac does not have much of a plot or even dialogue. The short summary on this site pretty much describes the entire film. What works really well in Maniac is the suspense that does not let go throughout the entire film. The psychotic villain is amazing as well. He is brilliantly portrayed by Joe Spinell. All the effects when it comes to killings and gore still look very good today which is quite an achievement for 1980 and thus Maniac never looks that dated. A few things in the script seem completely unbeliavable especially the relationship between Frank (the maniac) and Caroline Munro's character Anna. Nevertheless Maniac is still an enjoyable classic that will appeal to fans of old-school horror.

This low budget romp through the American nightmare is not really a slasher film, though it does see a maniac running around murdering people for no apparent, or perhaps that should be no rational, motive. This guy is eclectic if nothing else: he murders men as well as women, and he uses both weapons and his hands. "Maniac" is set in New York, and as crime buffs may know, a few years earlier a bloke name Berkowitz was running around doing essentially the same thing, though the Son of Sam was positively normal compared with this guy. So what is his problem?It appears to be something to do with his late mother, that and the fact that eventually he attacks the wrong damsel, who gives as good as she gets and then some. It is likely this film was intended as a quasi-serious exploration of madness, but with gore for the sake of it and absent a proper plot, it is nothing more nor less than yet more outpourings of a sick mind, most probably that of its New York born director William Lustig.

Now I would like to start off this review by addressing the fact that Gene Siskel walked out on this movie during the infamous shotgun blast movie saying that there was no way the movie could redeem itself. He missed the point of this movie because he just wrote it off as a generic slasher movie when it really isn't and he walked out too early as the movie did redeem itself. This is a movie about a serial killer who's psychologically and emotionally scarred as he has voices in his head and whenever he kills someone he always regrets it later on. It was a really different idea for a movie at the time and I think they executed it very well. Joe Spinelli plays the role of the killer very well and Tom Savini's gore effects in this movie are great as always. It's not a perfect movie as it does drag on in certain moments, but it's still a horror classic in my book and as much as I love Siskel and Ebert I think that Gene Siskel missed the point of this movie due to walking out on it so early.

This is one of a few movies that really made me feel uncomfortable to see (and that doesn't happen often). It is something about the whole atmosphere that is so dark and disturbing. Another thing that also makes it so disturbing is the way we follow the killer's thoughts in the movie. Joe Spinell plays Frank perfectly. The effects are amazing and there's plenty of gore too. The only thing I can complain about is how much the ending reminded me of "Carrie" with the hand coming out of the grave. Otherwise it's great and I definitely recommend it for horror, gore fans.