I like a bit of variety on this here blog, and after last post’s discussion of three classy, classic Dracula films, I thought it would be good to go in a completely different direction and take on something cheap and grotty. I’m no gore hound per se and I’m not the kind of horror fan who is constantly hunting for the roughest stuff I can handle, but I do really appreciate when something works – when the effect actually gets to me – when the horror of a piece can linger in my mind and my mood. Today’s film is clearly one of those. Filmed to the brim with top notch suspense sequences, viscerally disturbing violence, and gritty, dangerous atmosphere, and furthermore grounded by a totally committed, unhinged, and scary central performance from Joe Spinell, William Lustig’s Maniac is really one to watch… if you’re up for it – and, to be fair, not everyone will be.
Maniac (1980)
On paper, this doesn’t necessarily seem like a film that might top a lot of lists: following a creepy weirdo with mommy issues around NYC as he hunts down young women, kills them, scalps them, and nails their hair onto his collection of mannequins. Writing about it, I have to look up synonyms for “skeezy.” It’s the sort of movie that might make you want to take a shower afterwards (but maybe you’ll feel vulnerable there – at the very least, you may want to open a packet of moist towelettes). Ugly and mean, with an uncomfortable conflation of sexual desire and violent impulse, as well as a really downbeat ending – this is a “feel-bad movie,” and I kinda love it.
Made during the first big slasher boom (though I don’t think I’d actually call this a slasher), Lustig’s film turns the still gelling conventions of the sub-genre on their head by focusing entirely on the killer himself rather than his victims, such that the real horror of the piece is more in its character study of its pitiable, if no less frightening, protagonist, Frank Zito, as embodied (and largely written) by character actor, Joe Spinell. There are wonderfully executed chase and kill scenes here that would shine in any early eighties slasher, but while they are really scary, their horror pales in comparison to just spending an hour and a half inside of Frank’s fevered mind. This situates the film closer to a work like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) or Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel, American Psycho, but whereas both of those examples follow a central killer who is at least outwardly cold and in control, Frank Zito is hot and tortured, and Spinell keeps his performance’s engine solidly in the red for most of the film.
Really, it seems like it shouldn’t work so well. The performance should come off as over-the-top and melodramatic. Frank’s backstory (growing up with a sex worker mother who alternatingly neglected and abused him resulting in his compulsion to prey on attractive women for their sexuality as he gibbers and mutters – a fevered exchange between the traumatized child he was, the mother who maltreated him, the adult killer he’s become, his victims, and the mother he has recreated and asserted control over via the bloody wigged mannequins he surrounds himself with) should come off as at best facile, and at worst, offensively reductive in its armchair psychology rooted in misogynistic tropes. The plotting should come off as nonsensical and unrealistic. This feels like it shouldn’t rise above being a run of the mill, grungy, cheap little body count movie, memorable primarily for its squalor (and, to be clear, there can be value in films such as those, but I think there is so much more here).
But this is one of the reasons I really do love this genre. All of those accusations are basically true, and it is still a great film: intense, moving, uncomfortable, and wholly worthwhile. Though it seems to have been made largely in an exploitation mode, all involved mainly just trying to put something together that would be shocking, exciting, and sell tickets, the talent and total commitment of the creative team just shines through, resulting in a scary, disturbing, rough art object. Lustig put all he had, financially and otherwise, into getting his first non-pornographic feature off the ground, and it shows. Spinell was a great character actor (who also co-wrote and developed the piece, investing all of his salary from Cruising in it as well), but he’d never had the chance to lead a film before, and his work here is so emotionally grounded even while he plays for the cheap seats. Tom Savini had no budget to speak of for the effects, but everything is set up to be filmed so perfectly, making simple “right out of the kit” solutions (as I’ve seen him describe them in an interview) land with visceral power. At every turn, the love and passion and talent and hunger that went into this ugly little picture is just so abundantly clear. This all yields a commitment to the material that elevates it far above what it could have been, without adding a hint of pretension.
The film begins in typical fashion with a cold open kill scene – a young couple sleeping on the beach are murdered by a giant, looming figure that has been watching them while hiding among the reeds. The girl is dispatched quickly with a scream and a slit throat, but when her boyfriend returns with more firewood, his death takes time – garroted and held aloft by the killer, the camera focusing on his feet as his body jerks and twitches and finally falls limp, blood pouring down from above as the wire cuts through flesh. It is effectively savage, but could fit in many other films of the era, but then in the next shot, the film reveals its uniqueness as we cut to the main character, Frank (recognizably the killer from the first scene), waking up in bed as if from a nightmare. He is drenched in sweat and panting in misery and fear. Was this a dream or a memory? Did he actually kill them? The title card announces “Maniac” and we get a gist of how we are going to spend the rest of the run time. As the opening credits roll, we are shown something of his living situation. His cramped room features a candle lit shrine to a photo of a woman (his mother, as we will come to understand) and is otherwise filled with objects of art – some merely abstract and some disturbing, but the one that catches out attention is the mannequin revealed to be lying in the bed behind him, with what looks like a bloody wig nailed onto her head. This guy is clearly not well.
Shortly thereafter, we see Frank go upstairs with a street prostitute one trick away from making her rent and calling it a night, and what follows is so awkward and naturalistic as to initially feel sad and sweet, though always with the edge of fear – we can only assume he is actually a killer and she is in great danger. She seems nice and genuine – warm with him, but also clearly just doing her job and trying to upsell him out of economic need. He is clearly uncomfortable with physical intimacy, but also plainly wants it, at first asking her to model for him and leave her clothes on before finally getting more physical. The scene takes its time as she tenderly coaxes him out of his shell until he is capable of participating more fully, and it is strangely affecting, but at the same time, the tension is so thick; we know how strange he is – even if he isn’t actually a killer (and he probably is), he is quite off.
Thus, it’s not terribly surprising, but still shocking and awful when he rolls on top, grabs her by the neck and starts squeezing the life out of her, the camera largely zoomed in on his flushed, murderous visage, the sweat pouring down his face, until her body stills and his expression changes from rage to sorrow before he has to run to the bathroom to vomit. He is so dangerous, so scary, and at the same time, he does not seem to take any pleasure in his activities – he acts out an unwanted compulsion – he is a long suffering victim of his own impulses as well as a perpetrator of horrific acts. But of course, the viewer’s sympathies are tempered by the fact that he returns from the bathroom with a razor blade and proceeds to scalp the poor, dead woman.
Much of the film is relatively low on plot after that – we see many more scenes of Frank hunting and killing and suffering and fighting with himself (as he speaks for the myriad voices that fill his head). But for all that it reiterates a similar scenario, I don’t feel it wears out its welcome or becomes repetitive. Also, it is surprising how much it never feels exploitative – the victims are primarily women (he kills men too, but only when they get in the way), and the violence is certainly gendered, but the filming is never leering and the violence doesn’t feel sexualized. In each instance, I find myself really caring about the given victim or victims, honestly more than in many a slasher flick wherein they can so often feel two dimensional and disposable. Here, we aren’t given much in the way of background information, but I do believe in each of these women, filmed as actual humans and not objects, sexual or otherwise – I worry for them – and I hold my breath, waiting for the possibility that this time he won’t do what he always does, that this time he won’t succeed – he is, after all, not some mythical embodiment of evil, but just an overweight, middle aged guy with mental health issues.
And the play of identification is a really interesting aspect of the film that sets it apart from the pack. Though Frank generally dominates our point of view, we meet each of his (potential) victims as authentic people with depth and nuance and lives, and we temporarily live and fear vicariously through them. At no point do I ever root for Frank or cheer his violence (as might happen in something like a Friday the 13th or a Halloween film where the masked killer is the main draw). There are drawn out sequences of one young woman or another encountering his threat (sometimes understanding the danger she’s in and sometimes not until it is way too late) wherein Lustig teases audience expectation so expertly: Why is that door cracked? Is Frank there? No. Ok. Is he coming now? Yes, but he doesn’t see her. But does he and he’s just waiting for a better moment to strike? Maybe – but where is he now – the room is empty. Will he get her in the bath? No, but he’s still got to be in the apartment, right? I think so, but I don’t see him – he could be anywhere. She lowers her head to splash water on her face and oh no – he’s going to be in the mirror standing behind her, isn’t he? And, Bang! He appears and brings the scene to its nigh inevitable conclusion. Most famously, there is a standout chase scene in the subway that could hold its own against any other in any thriller, but the movie is full of similarly well-crafted scares. And all of those scares are so much more effective because Lustig lets us feel for those in danger before they are dispatched and we must once again accompany the killer back into his apartment and his mind and his fevered madness.
And that is not a pleasant place to be for him or for us. Past that, one feature separating Frank Zito from many a slasher killer is how deeply uncool he is. We endure him and even pity him, but I don’t think we are ever meant to like what he’s doing, and the film never endorses his violence. He is not some kind of aspirational anti-hero and his post-Norman Bates, proto-incel motivations and madness do not feel like they speak with an authorial voice. Sure, the whole “pathetic, misogynist killer obsessed with mommy” thing feels particularly skuzzy and played out, and I can’t say that I enjoy it, but honestly – it does feel rather realistic and therefore, so much scarier. I don’t believe that the shadows contain many masked killers with “the devil’s eyes,” but it goes without saying that the world is filled up with unhappy, emotionally and psychologically screwed up men who will target and hurt women to assuage their own pathologies. Frank really could be around the next corner.
Also interestingly, we don’t really know just how deep his insanity goes, and as his is the perspective we mostly see the world of the film through (as Ellis did about ten years later with his novel), I read it all as through the eyes of an unreliable narrator – though that is never really confirmed. We begin with a moment that could either be a memory or a dream. There is one scare with his mother rising from her grave that clearly didn’t really happen, as well as a horror set piece finale that must be taking place in his head. On top of that, there is a whole act of the movie that feels like it might be wholly, or at least significantly, imagined.
One day in the park, Frank notices a photographer snap his photo and he follows her home. She, Anna (Caroline Munro), is in the middle of developing said photograph when he rings her bell and introduces himself. She never asks how he found her home, but in a very friendly manner, she invites this stranger in to examine and discuss her photography, seemingly delighted to have the company. Over the course of the next half hour, interspersed with more scenes of murder (including a model friend of Anna’s), their relationship grows and deepens. In a strange little movie, this is perhaps the strangest part, and I think it is key.
Whenever Frank meets with Anna, he is so much more together – he dresses well; he looks clean; he isn’t constantly breathing hard and talking to himself; he is, if not charming, then at least a seemingly pretty “normal” guy, and it really appears that she enjoys spending time with him – perhaps romantically, or perhaps just as a friend, but regardless of the exact nature of the relationship, these scenes show that Frank can relate – he can be a person – he can control himself and there is some kind of hope for a “normal” satisfying life, free from his compulsive, miserable killing (a hope that will inevitably be dashed on the rocks). It is all kind of – nice – which is more than a little bizarre.
So bizarre that one could just chalk it up to bad writing, simply an entirely unbelievable turn of events – but I don’t. Though the film never outright explains this one way or another, for me, the whole Anna relationship, a significant portion of the movie, tells me that all is not as it seems. Either she isn’t real – or at least she isn’t really the way we see her. No one could be that nice to this creepy stranger – no one could be that available, always willing to drop whatever she’s doing any time he calls on her. No one would ask if a guy they’ve just met has a picture of his mother with him and not find it a little odd that he apparently always does in the pocket of his jacket. She seems like a fantasy – everything to him that his mother never was. So maybe she isn’t real…. Or, maybe she is real and the killings all happen in his mind – the clammy madman, bathed in perspiration and grunting insanely is his true inner life, while on the surface, he appears to be a totally “normal” person, passing through society undetected every day. Is that a more frightening scenario? This doubt in my mind as I view it is never resolved and it lingers after the film is done.
Unsurprisingly, Maniac came in for no small degree of criticism on release, often seen by film reviewers as a vile, irresponsible, reprehensible film, a symbol of how our culture had degraded itself. Gene Siskel, for example, announced in his televised review that it was one of only two films he had ever walked out of (after only thirty minutes), he and his partner, Roger Ebert, no friends to the slasher film in the eighties. While I can understand a person being put off by content like this (and I can easily accept that someone wouldn’t want to spend this time with Frank, wouldn’t want to be in a position of having to pity such a monster, or to be reminded of how commonplace, and thus terrifying, this kind of gendered violence can be), to so flatly dismiss its admittedly queasy artistic value is short sighted at the least, and not worthy of serious criticism.
That said, it is sometimes a rough watch and is clearly not for everybody. But if you are ready for its unpleasantness, Lustig and company will take you on a real horror ride – sometimes enjoyably scary and suspenseful, sometimes sickly and uncanny. You will be confronted with ugliness and tragedy and pain, but also, strangely enough, I think it’s always evident how much, for its creators, this low budget gem was a true labor of love into which they poured their whole hearts. In that, there is beauty, just as in the depth of the film’s grotesque abattoir, there still resides something of humanity.