MANIAC (1980) — What rigid collodion you have!

Cinema of Cruelty (Movies for Masochists)

On this week’s annotated deep dive, The Cultists present Bill Lustig’s controversial killer classic 'Maniac' (1980). Initially pitched as "Jaws but on land," Maniac tells the tale of Frank Zito, our man-about-town who can’t help but prowl the streets at night, scalping the women who remind him of dear old dead mom and thumbtacking his permed late-night winnings to stolen store front mannequins. And what’s more, we get to stay with him as he does it. Making the bold decision to focus entirely on our little maniac as the central protagonist, Maniac presents 90 minutes of the life of Frank. No Cops, no Campers, just Frank. And what a life it is.

A self-admitted homage to the great grind house horror flicks of Lustig’s youth, and coming out right on the first wave of a new generation of resurgent horror (with it’s first screening at Cannes even premiering the same weekend as the release of the first Friday the 13th), one would think the world would have been ready for this seedy gore fest of a lone man’s zany past time. But it wasn’t. Reviled by critics as nothing a “civilized” human could stomach, to this day there remains a camp of people who maintain that Maniac is a vile, misogynistic insult to human decency. The other camp, however, sees in its gritty celluloid frames nothing but a shinning gem of genre cinema—an under watched and under appreciated relic of something truly unique. But love it or loathe it, this film seeped into the horror cannon in a way that remains inarguably influential and important. (It’s also just a f*** ton of fun).

Topics Include: Maniac’s production history; Production notes and trivia gleaned from the multiple director commentaries; Tom Savini’s special effects; Kem-Tone film processing, F-stop pushing, and other technical reasons the film looks the way it does; The film’s pioneering of dolby stereo and hi/low frequency sounds; Comparing Frank’s passions, kills, and paraphilia to other real-life serial killers contemporary to the film’s release; and all (or at least many of) the laws and regulations this movie violated in the real world from start to finish during filming (from tricking SAG, to bribing off duty cops to distract subway attendants, to ditching a car filled with blood to disappear in Harlem); and the wonders yet unforgettable smell of rigid collodion...