Maniac (1980 film)

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Maniac
Theatrical release poster.
Directed by	William Lustig
Produced by	Andrew W. Garroni William Lustig
Written by	C.A. Rosenberg Joe Spinell
Starring	Joe Spinell
Music by	Jay Chattaway
Cinematography	Robert Lindsay
Editing by	Lorenzo Marinelli
Distributed by	Analysis Film Releasing Corporation
Release date(s)	December 26, 1980
Running time	87 min
Country
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Maniac is a 1980 slasher film, about a disturbed and traumatized serial killer who scalps his victims. It was directed by William Lustig, and co-written by Joe Spinell (who also developed the story and starred as the lead character) and C.A. Rosenberg.

Contents 1 Plot Outline 2 Cast 3 Trivia 4 External links

[edit] Plot Outline

Frank Zito is a middle-aged, overweight Italian man living in an unspecified borough of New York City, possibly The Bronx or Brooklyn. By day, Frank is a stylishly dressed, reserved yet friendly photographer. At night, however, his personality degenerates into that of a mumbling schizophrenic, who carries on one-sided, often incoherant conversations with his dead mother while stalking around a small bedroom filled with hacked-up mannequins and childhood mementos. As the film progresses, the audience becomes privy to Frank's nighttime stalking sessions, in which he ventures into the city to kill and scalp women. Frank then brings their scalps back home to nail to mannequins, which he then sleeps with for several nights before placing the mannequin in another area of his apartment and going out again to repeat the process.

Midway through the film, Frank befriends and then romances a fashion photographer, but his daytime life and nighttime life begin to merge, to the point that he loses his tenuous grip on reality altogether. The film's now infamous ending finds Frank's mannequins transforming into the re-animated corpses of his victims, which then procede to pin him to his bed, disembowel him, and decapitate him. The next morning, detectives break into Frank's apartment and find Frank dead on his bed of a self-inflicted machette wound. After the detectives leave the room to secure the rest of the apartment, however, Frank's corpse opens its eyes.

Frank's motive, and what exactly he is trying to accomplish--his "fantasy"--are never directly addressed, with hints only being dropped via Frank's monologues to himself.

The film also has a somewhat notorious ending among horror film fans, as it is not only completely open-ended, but provides a variety of possibilities as to what actually occurred, all of them contradicting.

Despite the attention paid to the climax, however, the film's most infamous and widely talked about scene^{[citation needed]} is the "Disco Boy Scene," in which special effects man Tom Savini, dressed in full 1970s disco regalia, has his head blasted off with a shotgun while making out with a woman in the front seat of a vintage car. The scene--filmed in slow motion and lit entirely by the reflected headlights of the car--is extremely graphic and realistic in its depiction of the damage caused by the man's head being blown apart at near point blank range by 12 gauge buckshot; Savini himself was a Vietnam War veteran, and used his firsthand knowledge of the carnage he saw on the battlefield to create the effect.

[edit] Cast

• Joe Spinell - Frank Zito
• Caroline Munro - Anna D'Antoni
• Gail Lawrence - Rita
• Kelly Piper - Nurse
• Rita Montone - Hooker
• Tom Savini - Disco boy
• Hyla Marrow - Disco girl
• James Brewster - Beach boy
• Linda Lee Walter - Beach girl
• Tracie Evans - Street hooker
• Sharon Mitchell - Nurse #2
• Carol Henry - Deadbeat
• Nelia Bacmeister - Carmen Zito
• Louis Jawitz - Art director
• Denise Spagnuolo - Denise
• Billy Spagnuolo - Billy
• Frank Pesce - TV reporter

[edit] Trivia

• During the sequence where the nurse, played by Kelly Piper, is stalked in a part of New York City's subway system, some of the graffiti in the scummy bathroom reads “Apocalypse Now!!” a reference to the 1979 film that had come out the year before Maniac's release.
• The character of Frank Zito— including the reasons for his serial murder spree, the fixation on a deceased mother figure, his obvious penchant for sexual perversity and use of his victim's body parts— recalls real-life serial murderer Ed Gein.
• The film's most controversal and memorable scene is where Tom Savini's character gets his head blown off with a shotgun. Earning it an "X" rating.
• Special effects legend Tom Savini did the special effects for the film.
• The song Maniac was written by Michael Sembello and Dennis Matkosky, after Matkosky had been inspired by the film. Its lyrics about a killer were rewritten so that it could be used in the 1983 film Flashdance. The song's use in Flashdance earned it an Academy Award nomination, but it was disqualified when it emerged that the song had not been written specifically for the film. [1]

[edit] External links

• Maniac at the Internet Movie Database