William Lustig

  • Maniac Cop 2 (1990)

    Maniac Cop 2 (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2020) Considering my low opinion of slashers, it’s a bit surprising that I ended up moderately enjoying Maniac Cop 2. Interestingly enough, it’s a sequel that assumes the best parts of its predecessor, and strategically maximizes a few elements in order to get even larger audiences. For one thing, it takes as granted the supernatural nature of its titular Maniac Cop brought back from the dead. For another, it frequently trades gore for action with more stunts than the previous film. The iconography of the killer cop is also maximized, which is nearly always a good thing in creating great visuals. (There is one great fire-stunt shot that’s so good I’m wondering why it hasn’t been stolen by later generations of filmmakers.) Best of all, though, is how writer Larry Cohen and director William Lustig stick to their B-movie guns: Maniac Cop 2 is wall-to-wall entertainment, clearly dedicated to being a pure thrill machine. Claudia Christian has a starring role, and Bruce Campbell is back for a brief encore. This being said, this does remain a B-movie bordering on slasher exploitation—keep your expectations in check.

  • Maniac Cop (1988)

    Maniac Cop (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2020) So there’s this maniac and he’s a cop and this is a slasher horror film set in New York City and I can probably stop the review right here because you know all you really need to know about Maniac Cop. It’s directed by William Lustig (who also directed 1980’s execrable Maniac) but written by Larry Cohen, so there’s something that can’t easily be dismissed in the script and the result is, much to my dismay, an above-average slasher—maybe even a dark supernatural thriller. One of the interesting tricks that Cohen plays is changing protagonists every so often, eventually landing on none other than Bruce Campbell (albeit in a histrionic-free turn) as the protagonist. Richard Roundtree also shows up! There are a few surprisingly good stunts at the end of the film, and the entire thing is very much a New York City movie—and proudly made as a B-movie. While I can’t bring myself to call Maniac Cop a good film, I liked it better than I thought, and feel that with police brutality being under an unprecedented scope, the film should find a specific audience in the ACAB crowd. Maybe we’ll end up with a remake one of these days.