First, the movie whose title alone lets you know what you're in for.
Maniac Cop (1988)
Rated R
Score: 4 out of 5
Maniac Cop is one of those late-period '80s slashers where 90% of the appeal comes down to the high concept. It's a slasher movie about a psycho cop killing people, and along the way, it made for a much better New York-set body count slasher than the Friday the 13th film that took on a similar conceit, Jason Takes Manhattan. It was a violent and brutal film that wore the sleaze of '80s New York proudly, carrying with it the feel of that city at that moment in time in a way that just can't be imitated. And, it's a pretty damn effective slasher too, with a better cast than normal and a very scary killer even if it's not the goriest film of its type, as well as some light commentary on how police brutality and misbehavior can cause people to distrust law enforcement. It's a film that's simultaneously of its time in its aesthetics and quite timely today in its themes, even if it's still pretty much exactly the kind of movie you'd expect to be titled Maniac Cop -- a very well-made version of that movie, but still.
Our villain is NYPD officer Matthew Cordell, whose brutal behavior on the job combined with his attempt to expose corruption got him sent to Sing Sing, where he got shivved in the shower. He didn't stay dead, though -- instead, he rose from the grave and started a one-man war against the NYPD, heading out in his uniform and murdering people in order to sow distrust in the police force that he feels betrayed him. From the moment we're introduced to him putting on his uniform in the opening credits, Cordell is a threatening presence on screen, a man wearing the external symbols of authority and public safety that he then makes a mockery of. Consistently framed in shadows, Cordell lets us know how much damage he can do from his first kill, where he easily snaps a woman's neck in cold blood. His signature weapon, a police baton with a long dagger hidden inside it, is original, creative, and adds to his specifically menacing nature as a trusted authority figure gone wrong. As mentioned earlier, 90% of the appeal of a movie like this comes from the title and the killer's gimmick, and Cordell's actor Robert Z'Dar makes for an excellent strong, silent killer who, in lieu of a mask like Michael Myers, instead embodies every stereotype of an asshole cop who has issues with violence. He's a perfect match for late '80s New York, the other imposing, threatening character in this film that inhabits every frame of it. Director and native New Yorker William Lustig, who previously made the original Maniac and the Death Wish riff Vigilante, shoots his hometown in the way that only someone who's lived through the city's darkest era possibly could, a land of drugs, pimps, and random violence that's impossible to mistake for anywhere else. It's a film that'll have you looking over your shoulder not because of Cordell, but because you think you heard a car alarm or gunshots outside your house.
Leading the effort to stop Cordell are three of his fellow officers: Tom Atkins's detective Frank McCrae, Bruce Campbell's Jack W. Forrest, Jr., and Laurene Landon as Theresa Mallory. All three of them are solid leads, with Atkins lending an old-fashioned detective movie feel to the proceedings, Campbell's "lovable asshole" persona portrayed here as just a straight-up asshole who cheats on his wife, and Landon making for a good final girl who gets a hell of a fight with Cordell towards the end. A major thread running through all of their stories is, again, the state that New York was in during that time, with public trust in the effectiveness of the police seeming to be in freefall even before Cordell came on the scene. As news of the "maniac cop" starts to spread, a panicky woman shoots a police officer with her purse gun thinking that he'll kill her, illustrating what the worsening reputation of the New York City Police Department is doing to the very sort of law and order they fight to uphold. If Cordell illustrates everything wrong with New York in 1988, then the protagonists illustrate just as effectively why it's all going wrong, trying to keep things together but feeling as though they're in a losing battle.
And of course, as a straightforward slasher flick, it's also a really fun time. The first two kills are both highlights, taking common interactions with police -- a woman running to an officer for safety after being mugged, and a routine traffic stop -- and twisting them into horror movie scenarios by having the officer in question be Cordell. The kills themselves aren't the highlight here; rather, that would be the setups, exploiting the fact that the killer is a cop and subverting the image of safety often associated with them in pop culture. As far as slashers go, this is also a very action-packed one, the third act involving a car chase and the St. Patrick's Day parade (a date that, in most major northern cities, doubles as an unofficial Police Appreciation Day thanks to the long history of the Irish on the force). Lustig clearly wasn't working with a very large budget here, but he had the skills to put that budget to great use, milking the New York setting and exploiting its dark, nighttime streets and alleyways along with the claustrophobic interiors of the police station. It's as far removed from the typical backwoods slasher setting as you can get, but the novelty worked, and given his filmography, I'm convinced that Lustig was bringing some of his real experience with New York at the time to bear.
The Bottom Line
It's not a particularly deep movie, but it holds up better than its sequels, between its interesting characters, its memorable killer, its familiar yet twisted setting, and some commentary on the police that's still relevant today. Once you're done watching Jason stalk camp counselors, give this one a spin.
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The sequel cranks up the violence like a good sequel should, but does it make for a better movie?
Maniac Cop 2 (1990)
Rated R
Score: 3 out of 5
I've heard Maniac Cop 2 described as one of the rare slasher sequels that's better than the original, and I definitely get where they're coming from. It's clear that the budget was beefed up for the second go-around, with much more spectacular action and horror sequences, a meatier plot, and a secondary antagonist who made for a great companion to the villain Matt Cordell. If mayhem is what you're here for, this has its predecessor beat. That being said, speaking personally, I felt that some of the story turns made me pretty queasy in hindsight, particularly in how it slips into a trap that has befallen so many horror franchises in attempting to flesh out the killer's backstory. If you're prepared to sit through some very circa-1990 "tough on crime" messaging, however, you'll find a film that works as both a grisly action-horror flick and a great time capsule of the era in which it came out.
The film starts literally moments after the last one ended, with Cordell not quite dead after his defeat in the last movie and, shortly after, continuing his war against the city of New York and especially its police department. Jack Forrest and Theresa Mallory are put back on duty to hunt him down, this time accompanied by detective Sean McKinney and police psychologist Susan Riley. Both Bruce Campbell and Laurene Landon are as good as they were before as Forrest and Mallory, though they are both quickly sidelined in favor of Robert Davi and Claudia Christian as the new protagonists McKinney and Riley. If Tom Atkins played McCrae in the first film as an old-fashioned hardboiled detective brought into the modern (1980s) era, then Davi plays McKinney as a character straight out of a Raymond Chandler flick, him being one of the few people I've seen after 1970 pull off the fedora-and-trench-coat look and make it look cool rather than dorky. He is a force of charisma who pulls the movie together and provides one of the best slasher cops I've ever seen. Christian, meanwhile, plays a final girl who's capable in a very New York way, the subject of one of the film's best action scenes where she's tied to an out-of-control car and holding her own throughout the rest of the film as well -- made all the more impressive by the fact that she was three months pregnant during production and apparently had a miscarriage due to the stuntwork. (By all accounts, she was also supposedly a handful to work with on set, too.)
The titular cop, of course, is also back, and this time, he's got a partner in crime. While Cordell this time has shades of gray beyond just the pure, grade-A psychopath he was in the first film, much of his villainy has instead been transferred to Steven Turkell, a character who feels lifted straight out of Lustig's Maniac in his behavior. (Literally -- Lustig originally wanted to cast Joe Spinell, who played the killer in that film, in the role and make this an unofficial sequel, and would have if Spinell didn't die in a bathtub accident.) A serial killer and all-around creep who preys on sex workers, Turkell sees Cordell as an ally to sow chaos across the city, eventually planning a raid on the Sing Sing Correctional Facility where he hopes to lead an army of criminals. Leo Rossi plays him as a slithering worm, an utter bastard who represents the worst that New York had to offer back then, somebody who thrives on inflicting pain on others and sees the crime-ridden metropolis as his personal playground and a real-life Grand Theft Auto game avant le lettre. He's the kind of sadist who could only exist in a movie like this, and awaiting his inevitable comeuppance is why I watch movies like this. That's not to say that Turkell gets all the "fun" to himself, though. Cordell's feats of slasher mayhem easily top the last film, most notably a battle in a police station reminiscent of The Terminator that opens with a multi-kill for the ages at the shooting range, and it all culminates in an explosive climax at Sing Sing. The action and effects have been seriously ramped up since last time, and the film does not let them go to waste, producing a tone that is as much like a police action movie from that era as it is a slasher movie. The kills here bring the pain and deliver the goods.
So, if everything about this has seemingly been improved over last time, then why the lower score? Well, it comes down to the writing, and I'll admit right now that some of it has less to do with objective faults than my own personal distaste. A major plot thread is that Cordell was a hero cop in life, somebody who was framed for brutality by his fellow officers for trying to uncover corruption, and that this is driving his attempt to destroy the NYPD. The messaging on this is an utter mess; at times, the film feels like it's gunning for its predecessor's portrayal of police violence as undermining the mission of law enforcement, but at other times, it wants to paint Cordell as an antihero and a mistreated victim who should've been allowed to "do his job", and the people who tried to stop him as being the ones to blame for his rampage. This is the flip side of the '80s New York sleaze that runs through the film: its portrayal of a lawless city often leans into an implicit support for extreme measures to be taken in bringing down the crime rate. The mixed messages were, for me, the film's biggest sin on a storytelling level, as it seemed like it couldn't decide whether to be critical of the police like the first movie or let its "back the blue" flag fly. It's the flip side of creating a charismatic slasher villain who happens to be a police officer: even if you created the character as a satire of police brutality, fans of '80s-style slashers love to root for the bad guy, and the franchise as a whole eventually accommodates them. It happened with Jason, it happened with Freddy, and it happened with Cordell. For me, this is actually part of why I found this film fascinating. I recommend this movie as much as a historical artifact as a legitimate action-horror movie on its own merits. If you want to understand why there was so much bipartisan support for a more aggressive law enforcement response to crime in the early '90s, and why the now-maligned "crime bill" of 1994 was once so widely praised, watch this movie and its predecessor with their portrayal of New York in the late '80s.
The Bottom Line
From its brutal violence and action scenes to its questionable messages, Maniac Cop 2 expertly fuses the thrills of an '80s slasher with those of a '70s exploitation film, and the things I didn't like about it were largely subjective. Both this and the first movie are highly recommended for slasher fans.
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As for the third... well, there's not much sugarcoating this one.
Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence (1993)
Rated R for strong violence, and for language and some drug content
Score: 1 out of 5
I knew I was in trouble the moment I saw the words "Directed by Alan Smithee" in the opening credits. A pseudonym used by directors who have disowned the films they made because they felt that their artistic vision was compromised, "Alan Smithee" has a long and checkered career making terrible movies. In this case, William Lustig quit during production, leaving one of the producers to finish the film, and the problems that Lustig encountered are visible all over the finished product. Whereas the last two films kept the supernatural elements ambiguous, this film is about a voodoo priest resurrecting Cordell for poorly-explained reasons (beyond "let's make more money off of video rental stores") and then seeking out a mortally-wounded female police officer involved in a violent shooting in order to take her as the Bride of Maniac Cop. It's a film that was clearly padded out to reach feature length, Lustig having intended for it to be only about an hour long, and it loses the New York grit that elevated the last two films; most of it takes place in a hospital, and in the scenes set outside of such, they barely even bother to hide the fact that they filmed this in Los Angeles. It's a mess of ideas slapped together with the name of a better film attached, and one that barely works as a movie.
If there's a silver lining, it's in the Maniac Cop himself, and especially Robert Z'Dar going three-for-three as the villain. Even if his characterization has taken a toll, he's still a monster of a slasher villain, with kills that skirt the line between goofy and brutal: throwing a guy in the air and then shooting him several times before he lands, and frying a man with the full-blast radiation of the hospital's X-ray machine, were some of the highlights. That being said, I'd have taken the morally cloudy Matt Cordell from the second film over what the script did to him here. The repeated flashbacks to his death in Sing Sing not only drag the film to a halt on multiple occasions, they feel like desperate attempts to tie this film's story to that of its predecessors, with Cordell this time around fixated on police officer Katie Sullivan as a kindred spirit in a plot assisted by voodoo. Sullivan, who spends most of the film in a hospital bed after the first act, is little more than a plot coupon to drive Cordell forward, the rest of the human characters are all completely forgettable, Cordell's obsession seems to have been pulled out of thin air, and the last movie's fixation on police brutality as something that people make too big a deal out of -- which, again, kind of undercuts the message of the first movie -- is only amplified as Sullivan, like Cordell, is portrayed as an antihero done dirty by the media and the authorities. Had Katie had an actual character, this might have been easier to swallow, but again, we only get to spend real time with her in one scene towards the beginning of the film.
And it's not even all that entertaining, either. The padding between the kills can get ridiculous, and taking the film out of the streets of New York and into the confines of a hospital doesn't do a whole lot to create much claustrophobia or atmosphere. Given how the film practically shows off the Downtown Los Angeles skyline and the Sixth Street Viaduct at the very end, it's clear that this was done because they knew they couldn't figure out a way to realistically pass off Los Angeles as New York, and instead had most of the film take place inside a generic building that could be anywhere. With that, the film loses a key component of what gave its predecessors their unique tone, the setting within a grungy, rat-infested urban dump, and in its place it offers a reheated version of the setting of Halloween II that does it few favors. Take out Cordell, and you could've had any generic direct-to-video slasher flick from that era.
If there's a silver lining, it's in the Maniac Cop himself, and especially Robert Z'Dar going three-for-three as the villain. Even if his characterization has taken a toll, he's still a monster of a slasher villain, with kills that skirt the line between goofy and brutal: throwing a guy in the air and then shooting him several times before he lands, and frying a man with the full-blast radiation of the hospital's X-ray machine, were some of the highlights. That being said, I'd have taken the morally cloudy Matt Cordell from the second film over what the script did to him here. The repeated flashbacks to his death in Sing Sing not only drag the film to a halt on multiple occasions, they feel like desperate attempts to tie this film's story to that of its predecessors, with Cordell this time around fixated on police officer Katie Sullivan as a kindred spirit in a plot assisted by voodoo. Sullivan, who spends most of the film in a hospital bed after the first act, is little more than a plot coupon to drive Cordell forward, the rest of the human characters are all completely forgettable, Cordell's obsession seems to have been pulled out of thin air, and the last movie's fixation on police brutality as something that people make too big a deal out of -- which, again, kind of undercuts the message of the first movie -- is only amplified as Sullivan, like Cordell, is portrayed as an antihero done dirty by the media and the authorities. Had Katie had an actual character, this might have been easier to swallow, but again, we only get to spend real time with her in one scene towards the beginning of the film.
And it's not even all that entertaining, either. The padding between the kills can get ridiculous, and taking the film out of the streets of New York and into the confines of a hospital doesn't do a whole lot to create much claustrophobia or atmosphere. Given how the film practically shows off the Downtown Los Angeles skyline and the Sixth Street Viaduct at the very end, it's clear that this was done because they knew they couldn't figure out a way to realistically pass off Los Angeles as New York, and instead had most of the film take place inside a generic building that could be anywhere. With that, the film loses a key component of what gave its predecessors their unique tone, the setting within a grungy, rat-infested urban dump, and in its place it offers a reheated version of the setting of Halloween II that does it few favors. Take out Cordell, and you could've had any generic direct-to-video slasher flick from that era.
The Bottom Line
A dull cash-in that represents the depths of the slasher genre in the early '90s, Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence is a film whose own creators seem embarrassed by it, and rightfully so. The few cool moments it has don't make up for everything I had to put up with to get there.
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