If you were to watch a slasher film, would you be offended if the film delivered the gore it promised? Would you expect a deep, existential exploration of the human psyche, or would you just want to laugh and be entertained? I’m always amazed by what films make it onto the high-brow Criterion Channel, as it’s no stranger to ‘junk cinema’, but then again, one might say this is what gives the channel its charm.
William Lustig’s Maniac is currently being featured on the channel, and it seemed to offend critics in its day. Granted, while the ‘slasher’ film was still new to viewers then, Gene Siskel claimed to have walked out due to its violence, and Roger Ebert likewise called it ‘exploitative.’ Now, years later, as a genre all its own, would these critics have known what they were getting into? This is a slasher film, and what can one expect but to see people being slashed? Perhaps it does take years later to gain a perspective, because when I watched it, I found it funny.
Frank Zito (Joe Spinell) is a lonely murderer down on his luck (already that sounds hilarious) who is a cross between Norman Bates and Travis Bickle. He apparently has undergone abuse at the hands of his mother, and so, in turn, he’s now acting out his rage on women as he murders them (and their accompanying boyfriends), only to then scalp them and attach the scalps to mannequins. His New York apartment is as dirty as Bickle’s in Taxi Driver (a film in which Spinell briefly appears), filled with victims’ memorabilia and said mannequins throughout. (Jeffery Dahmer, anyone?) One can expect lots of dripping stage blood, a guy getting his head blown off and shattered, women being stalked in the subway station, only to then be stabbed, etc.
Ok, I get it. You are thinking that one must be a psychopath to find this funny. Keep in mind, however, that the film is so over the top that it is impossible to take it seriously. Spinell does a good rendering of a pathetic killer (he looks like a sadder Ron Jeremy with Travis Bickle angst and even at one moment says out loud, ‘you talkin’ to me?’). Sort of akin to the early trash films of John Waters, one doesn’t watch Pink Flamingos for the story or acting. Similar can be said about Maniac. (All that was missing was the lovely Divine.)
While Maniac isn’t a good film, I found it entertaining in a non-pretentious take on trauma as it relates to violence, sort of like the camp of Mommie Dearest. To contrast, think of how many critics have praised the violent Salo, a film that takes itself seriously and is, above all, dull. Maniac, however, finishes at just under 90 minutes, and the gore is so fake, so ostentatious, that it’s impossible to not laugh. In one scene, Frank encounters a woman photographer named Anna (Caroline Munro) who enjoys taking photos of other women because she likes making them ‘look beautiful.’ Frank tells her that he is a painter, and the two go out to dinner. He doesn’t try to kill her, but rather, meets up with her the next day and ends up killing one of her models instead. (I mean, might as well.) He wants to ‘own’ them, you see, and so this is why he likes keeping mannequins with the bloody hair from his victims. (Again, an early Dahmer?)
In addition to the stiff acting and the accents, be it English or New York, sounding fake and rehearsed, above all, this film feels like a young director having fun with his low budget film. Besides that, not much else happens, though eventually Frank takes Anna to visit his mother’s grave, and while he weeps, we hear his mother’s abusive voiceover. Anna tries to comfort him, but Frank attempts to strangle her instead. She gets away. Then he goes back to his apartment, only to face the fate of his many mannequins coming to life to murder him, but wouldn’t you know, it was just a hallucination, and he ends up stabbing himself instead. The end.
Now years later, does this sound like a film worth being offended by? I suppose in the 1980s, critics viewed this as a celebration of misogyny and female helplessness, but again, I find it more of a satire on a pathetic character who has no one in his life. Should we feel sorry for him? Well, no, of course not. There is nothing here that hasn’t been done before, and better (case in point Psycho and Taxi Driver), but possibly we can assume that Frank becomes overwhelmed with shame due to his mother’s abuse, and so he decides to end his life in the same way he murders his many victims.
Perhaps the best part of Maniac is the portrait of New York City—distant, lonely, filled with women who put him in mind of his mother. The empty subway station. (Lustig does a good job evoking fear.) While Maniac remains much of a silly film, I’d much rather watch this than what passes for Oscar wins nowadays.
I mentioned how the Criterion Channel will often showcase ‘junk cinema’, and one of those junky films I rewatched recently was The Hours (2002), which is partly set in New York City (the rich side). While I recall this being a ‘well-made’ film at a visual and technical level, I had forgotten its severe use of stereotypes and clichés. From the use of water to symbolize death and birth, to a dying gay man with AIDS suiciding via jumping out the window, to Meryl Streep’s melodrama in the kitchen while wearing dishwashing gloves (a great actress in a bad role), there are only so many traumas a viewer can take. Bring out the knife. Where was Frank Zito then?
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More from Jessica Schneider: Reshaping Time and Narrative: On Reading Kenneth Rexroth, Aimless, Shapeless: Catherine Hardwicke’s “Thirteen” (2003), 1990s Eternal Ennui: Reviewing Richard Linklater’s “SubUrbia” (1996)