Being raised by an own abusive mother, schizophrenic Frank Zito needs to get revenge for the mistreatment he got as a child, and so he stalks and kills various young women in New York.
The best thing, or maybe the worst depending on how you see it, with William Lustig's Maniac is that it is very realistic and therefore much more frightening than your normal horror movie. Frank Zito doesn't wear a hockey mask, he doesn't bite girls in the neck, nor does use one specific weapon or leave riddles for the police to solve in order to find him, or find out what he's about to do next. No, he's just a schizophrenic psychopath, one that feels real and acts like a sane person at times to later drop that mask and become a beast..a beast that randomly stalks and kill girls. It's terrible, but in Maniac, as seen on screen, it's very good.
So we get to follow this nut-job that is Frank Zito, a man who goes out at night in order to kill women, scalping them and putting their hair and clothes on mannequins that his apartment is packed with. In there, he talks to them and he cares about them, all this because of an abusive mother. That is practically the film, that we get to follow Frank as he butchers women and keeps switching between the insane mode to the more sane mode every now and then. It might sound boring but it's most definitely not..what it is, is that it's very creepy and sometimes it even feels too darn real.
 
Even though it was made in the 80's, in 1980 to be exact, it has this great 70's feel to it. The way the people look and that very raw feel that a lot of movies from that time had, something that just totally disappeared later on in the 80's. Joe Spinell who plays the psychopath Frank himself does one helluva job with his character. It might have helped that Spinell both wrote and produced the film, but still, that doesn't mean that one can act, but the guy sure delivers there too. Of course, he should have a "greater feel" for the character he's playing since he wrote the guy himself so obviously, that might've helped a bit.
The pacing of the film might seem a bit slow at times, but these slower scenes makes it all so much creepier, and in the end it's more effective. I saw this movie ages ago when I was just a kid, but didn't realize just how good it was due to that I must've had ants in my pants. Watching it now though, it makes so much more sense and I could truly take it and understand it for the sickness it had to offer. It might sound weird, but watch it and if you really get into it, you'll see. It was quite hard though to feel sympathy for Frank since the guy's somewhat hard to relate to (if you're not a psycho yourself that is), but still, even for the things he did, he wasn't completely unlikable. This movie is much more gruesome and creepy than any slasher flick out there, because of that it has this realistic feel to it, and is about something that we read about in the newspapers every day.
Maniac is as fascinating as it is sick. Sometimes you don't wanna look, but you can help but to, and it's pretty much like that all the way through. But when it comes to horror, that is horror that almost feels too real, this one's sure worth the money.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 1980
DIRECTOR: William Lustig
WRITING CREDITS: C.A. Rosenberg, Joe Spinell
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Gail Lawrence
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 87 min
RATING: 9/10
Maniac Website/IMDB Click here
Maniac Trailer Click here
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