Review – ‘Maniac’ (1980)

A snapshot of the sleaze of 70s/80s New York. The gritty streets, neon signs and fluorescent subway stations, this film oozes with menace. This is just the backdrop, and in the foreground, a crazed, mannequin obsessed killer stalking the streets while moaning and panting every step of the way.

I was surprised by Maniac, it was way ahead of its time. Up until this point, many slashers focused primarily on the victims, how they outsmart the killer, and get caught one by one. This was the standard formula at this time, and it did help the audience to connect with the characters and place the audience members within the shoes of the final girl. Maniac does away with the formula which had been laid done by films such as Halloween and Friday the 13th and has a much stronger resemblance to Peeping Tom, a film created 20 years earlier where we also are shown the machinations of the killer, a photographer who stalks and hunts his women, ultimately catching their last screams through the lens of this camera.

The beauty of this technique, is that it places the audience in the shoes of the perpetrator, directly causing the people watching as implicit in the crimes of the titular maniac. The voyeuristic qualities make us uncomfortable, as if we are merely seeing this unfold and are powerless to stop it. This is how Maniac breaks the mould.

In seeing Frank Zito, the maniac in question, played by Joe Spinell, talk to his mannequins in his cramped room, whilst playing with the scalps of the recently deceased women who had met Frank, it really creates a sense of tragedy to the situation. We are seeing a this severely damaged character act out his deepest darkest torments on those around him, which is infinitely scarier than a supernatural being, because these maniacs exist in the real world. It reminded me greatly of 2019’s Joker, in the way it dealt with the sensitive subject matter of a person who had clearly lost his grip on reality and I see many similarities between the two.

The effects are fantastic and are done by Savini, my favourites being the exploding head and a particular end scene which I won’t spoil here, but had my mouth agape with shock. I really wasn’t expecting it.

The film manages to include quite a few standout scenes, one in which a nurse hides from Frank in a gritty, slimy subway station bathroom, the tension builds tentatively, we know it’s coming, but we just don’t know when.

Considering it’s release in 1980, after watching Maniac, you can see it’s ripples throughout horror cinema, and even beyond. A landmark film in the genre.

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