 Hello and welcome to another episode of Frightfully Forgotten Horror Movies, but before we get started, what are we drinking? We're drinking O'Grady's Four Leaf Clover Stout. Four Leaf Clover. I'm the Clover Batch. Burning Hell, little green bastard. Today we're going to be talking about 1980s maniac. It's about damn time. This movie was directed by William Lustig, and he did the God-awful piece of garbage Uncle Sam. Which we covered about too long ago. Click the link. Maniac is written by and stars the legendary Joe Spinell. Probably most notably in Godfather's One and Two and in Rocky One and Two. He was in Cruising as well. Yeah, yeah, he was, yeah. You're cruising for a piece of ass. Carolyn Monroe's in this, and she was in a lot of Hammer movies. Samaniac starts off. You see a hand put a quarter in one of those kind of binocular telescope things. There's a couple getting a little cozy on the beach, and the guy goes to get some wood. The lady's left all by herself, and this figure comes up behind her and slits her throat. The guy comes back with the wood, and this figure comes behind him and strangles him. Blood starts to come out of his neck. Yeah, just cuts into his throat. Drops the wood, and you can see all the blood squirting on the wood and his shoes. Then our main character, Frank Zito, wakes up. He's in this weird room with all these like candles and pictures of women and mannequins. Looks in the mirror and all these scars all over his chest. Gets dressed and goes out for the night. A couple of prostitutes. You're gonna give him the ultimate? Yeah, they're talking about the pricing. The ultimate is the highest price, so she's got to aim for the ultimate. Frank Zito walks by. She stops him. They go up to the hotel right there. Very convenient. They go up to the room, and he's laying there. That belt will add gold on it. He's being kind of awkward. He doesn't really want anything. She kind of has to get heavy with him. Eventually, he doesn't like it, and starts strangling her. Yeah, I like how he turns on a dime. You're a bad cheerleader. Skelps her. Takes his scalp back to his apartment and puts it on mannequin. Then you see him getting ready for another night of fun. He's got this violin case open. Box of cracker jacks. I'm feeling this violin case with guns. Fucking arsenal. Knives and shotgun shells. He gets in his car and sees this woman. He's like outside of a nightclub. They get in the car and they drive away. So he follows them, and they go off to like a make-out spot. Tom Savini, by the way, has picked this girl up and convinces her to get in the back seat with him. It's the mustache. You see Frank Zito? He's all peering in. It's super creepy. Scares the shit out of her. She's like, oh, I saw something. And both get in the front seat, turn on the headlights, and he's there with the shotgun. He jumps on the hood and just, boom, blows Tom Savini's head right off. It's one of the best headshots ever. Tom Savini earned his pay big time. Frank Zito goes to the park and there's this woman kind of taking pictures. Little girl runs into him with her bike and the photographer sees this, takes a picture of him, wanders over to where her bag is, gets the address. Two nurses that have just got off their shift. Well, are you sure you don't want to ride? Maniac on the loose. Yeah, exactly. He's still on the loose. Foolishly declines the ride, right? And she starts walking to the subway station. She gets a sense that somebody's behind her. She gets to the platform and the train is still there, but the doors are closed and she's trying to force the doors open. She can't get them open, so she's fucked. Meanwhile, this figure starts coming down the stairs, so she takes off to the washrooms and hides in one of the stalls. He comes in after her, starts checking out each of the stalls, but leaves the one that she's in. She comes out, figures she's got away with it, and ding! Huge bayonet! Right into her back, right through the front, too. Like, holy shit. He shows up at this photographer's house. He's not really there to kill her, though. Totally different. Kind of asks her out. He's like, well, you know, I know this place in Jersey, and they've got a great Clams Casino, and what the hell is Clams Casino? He's all dressed in the nines and all that disco-type shit on it. Yeah, that doesn't look like a fucking bum like he does in the rest of the movie. She's charmed by him, right? So she goes and they have a nice dinner, and she's got a photo shoot, and he kind of shows up. He's all got that present. Yeah, that present, that stuffed bear. He's making those sounds. I'm like, yeah, I would be too if she was wearing those leather pants. Goes over to this necklace, and he steals it. The model is in her apartment, and she hears a knock at the door, and it's Frank Zito, right? I found this. I think you lost it, and while the door's open, he does something with the latch. She closes the door, she draws a bath, ding! He comes out of the closet, just out of nowhere, ties her to the bed, and he's like, full-on maniac by this point. You'll never leave me, you'll never leave me, will you? He pulls out a knife. And really teases it too. Yeah, yeah, but he does end up killing her after he told her that he was going to keep her forever. Goes to pick Anne up for their date. He tells her, he's like, do you mind if we stop by my mother's grave? I just want to put some flowers on it. She says, sure, no problem. That's where we're going to end it. There's a lot more weird shit that happens with the maniac. So if you want to see how Maniac ends, well, fucking watch the movie, because it's great. One of the most unsung slashes of all time. It does get praised within the horror community, but a lot of people outside of horror got no clue how good this fucking movie is. And one of the best things about it is Joe Spinell. Yeah, pretty much a one-man show, right? And he's strong enough to carry the whole movie. Talk about an underrated actor. Kind of mirrors Sylvester Stallone, because he was friends with Stallone. He was in Rocky, and Stallone wrote Rocky, starred in Rocky. Well, Joe Spinell was like, fuck, well, I can do that too. So he wrote this and starred in it. It wasn't as big as Rocky, but it did make waves in the horror community. And because it was kind of seedy and sleazy and pretty gruesome for the time, it didn't get like a lot of love from the masses. Maybe the poster had something to do with it, the guy holding the knife in it with the... With the big boner. He's got a big fucking heart on it. Another thing about Joe Spinell is he apparently was one of the highest paid people on The Godfather because he just hung around and got paid for hanging around. Yeah, he was just clocking in and not really doing anything. But Coppola took like a liking to him. He was like, oh yeah, hang out, like learn. The dynamic of Joe Spinell's character is crazy in this movie because he switches gears when he goes to that woman's apartment. Yeah, he's nice. Yeah, he's charming. He's completely different, right? And it kind of mirrors real killers. Yeah. Right? How these people can meld into society. You'd never, ever know they were a killer. Especially real killers of that time. Exactly. Of the 80s and stuff like that that we're learning about now. Like the gasey tapes just came out on Netflix. Yeah. They're all charming guys. Well, he doesn't look like anybody who would be a murderer. That's the key. Yeah. It's a real nice change from like Michael Myers. You get to know Frank Zito and you know how his mother died and what is it with his mother that made things go off here for him? Sympathize with him. Something happened. You see the scars. It's a lot like, you know, Don't Go In The House, which we just covered. The whole mother thing. I like that they don't go into a backstory. It's just all what he's saying to himself. That's what makes it different than like Don't Go In The House. You don't see the flashbacks. It's all left up to your imagination. The effects. Tom Savini, you can't go wrong. The head explosion scene, that's all you need to really mention. It's fantastic. And he always talks about how he's so proud of that. Yeah. It's awesome. His own head exploding, you know. Even the scenes of like where he's scalping the women and everything, they don't even show that much, but it's enough to make you feel uneasy. And stabbing the girl right in the gut with a switchblade. No wonder this movie was kind of frowned upon because it's just so realistic. Yeah. And it's graphic. From the killings to the acting to the characters, it's all realistic. You believe this is all happening. The tension too in this movie. You're on the edge of your seat the whole time. Yeah. He's so crazy that he could literally do anything. And when he's chasing someone down like the nurse in a subway, like it's a long scene, he's gonna get her. When is he gonna get her? He keeps getting drawn out and you're just like getting more tense. They don't really show him at all. No. You know he's there. It's all her. It's all her and her reaction. And the fact that she's scared as hell. That scene is brilliant. The tension building in that scene is perfect. And then naturally it just comes out of nowhere, right? And just finishes her off. And same thing when he goes to give the necklace back to the model. The tension building is fantastic in that too. Yeah. He can just easily bust the door open. And kill her. And do something. No, he takes his time. Exactly. He enjoys. He wants to stalk her. And yeah, it's great. The settings of this movie is fantastic. Like his apartment. The mannequins and the pictures of the women and his mother with all the candles. His room is his mind. It's in New York, but it's the worst parts of New York. The dirty, seedy, like you don't want to be there, parts of New York. You feel dirty. All of the dark night shots and everything with the fog too. You really get the sense that you're alone in a huge city. Yeah. There should be people around. There should be people everywhere, but no one's there to help. The music in this movie too is, oh, it's perfect. It's so eerie and tense. And it just builds, it just builds every scene perfectly. This movie is totally relatable too because the stuff that was happening at the time, right? You had a lot of these weird murders going on. Ted Bundy, Son of Sam murders. Mirrors all of that. And it hits close to home. Seeing this in 1980, it must have hit close to home for a lot of people. Yeah. Who were kind of like, oh, that could happen to me in New York now. This movie was remade recently, and it's actually one that I will vouch for. Don't vouch for many remakes, but this one is quite good actually. It takes a different approach, starring Elijah Woods. And there was a sequel that had kind of started out for this too, right? Joe Spinell, he ended up dying so they could never fulfill the idea, right? Yeah. Joe Spinell died young. He died like in his early fifties. He accidentally cut himself, went to bed, and bled to death. He could have done some great things, I think, even though he was always chasing Maniac. But I think if he stuck around, he probably could have made another great movie. And we never got to see it, which is too bad. If you love slashers, you have to check out Maniac. It's one of the best underrated slashers of all time. That's right. And until next time, keep drinking.