In the tradition of MANIAC COP 2, MANIAC COP 3: BADGE OF SILENCE begins with footage from the end of the last one. Undead Maniac Cop Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar)’s honor guard funeral is intercut with new scenes of a voodoo priest (Julius Harris, also in Larry Cohen’s BLACK CAESAR) stabbing a head with a ritualistic dagger and chanting. So now we know that part 2’s CARRIE-esque ending is actually a voodoo curse. Man, first Chucky, then Screwface, now this. What the bloodclot, voodoo?
Robert Davi returns as Mac, who is investigating these voodoo guys and suspects a connection to Cordell. Claudia Christian’s character Riley doesn’t show, but there’s another female lead (Gretchen Becker), a younger officer nicknamed “Maniac Kate” for her Dirty Harry type approach to law enforcement. Mac knows her mother and considers her a kid sister, but seems kind of flirtatious in their first scene together at the gun range (hopefully now renamed The Six Target-Shooting Officers Killed By Maniac Cop In Part 2 Memorial Gun Range) where they take turns shooting the target while she vents about getting in trouble for shooting an attempted rapist. Mac says she should’ve waited a little longer so she could’ve shot more than just an attempted rapist. Classy.
Maniac Kate responds to a pharmacy holdup by a crazed pill-feaster (Jackie Earle Haley in the movie that came before the one that earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor). Kate and the junkie end up in the hospital, the hostage dead, and a pair of sleazy tabloid video journalists film the whole thing and broadcast an edited version that makes her look like she was in the wrong. (read the rest of this shit…)
Bruce Campbell and Laurene Landon return for the bigger, I think better MANIAC COP 2. I guess it had a bigger budget than the first one and it has a more confident, cinematic feel. Hats off to cinematographer James Lemmo (who also did the first one, MS. 45, VIGILANTE and THE GLADIATOR) for his deliberate, ominous pans through New York City locations. There’s even a great opening credits sequence designed by Pablo Ferro (DR. STRANGELOVE) that really establishes the mood as the camera glides across a police impound lot and the remains of the vehicle involved in the climax of part 1.
This is maybe 2 weeks later, when Jack (Campbell) has been cleared of the murders but is trying to get back on the force. I’m a little confused because there’s a new captain and reference to the previous one being dead, but for some reason the commissioner, played by Michael Lerner (BARTON FINK) instead of Richard Roundtree, and given a different name, is treated as the guy who’s always been there. He sends Jack and Theresa (Landon) to police psychologist Susan Riley (Claudia Christian, HALF PAST DEAD), which is also where a new character, Detective Sean “Mac” McKinney, ends up after shooting a suspect. (He didn’t kill him, but only because he says it’s too much paperwork.) (read the rest of this shit…)
MANIAC COP is like an ’80s b-movie dream team. William Lustig (MANIAC) directs, Larry Cohen (IT’S ALIVE!) writes, James Glickenhaus (THE EXECUTIONER, THE PROTECTOR) executive produces. And check out this cast: Tom Atkins (NIGHT OF THE CREEPS) is Frank McCrae, a tough NYC lieutenant investigating a murder spree by a mysterious dude in a police uniform. Bruce Campbell, one year after EVIL DEAD 2, is Jack Forrest, a cop who is implicated in the murders and goes on the run to find out who really did it. Hundra herself, Laurene Landon, plays his crimp-haired mistress Theresa Mallory, a fellow cop who helps him in his quest. Richard Roundtree (SHAFT) and William Smith (HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN) are the hardass commissioner and captain. Sam Raimi has a cameo. And also Jake LaMotta, for some reason. And Robert Z’Dar (TANGO & CASH) plays the maniac cop. He’s mostly in silhouette, so his superhumanly giant chin is not as much of a distraction as in some movies.
(Wait a minute… how did Bruce Campbell title his autobiography “If Chins Could Talk Kill” when he co-starred with Z’Dar? He knows his chin ain’t shit.)
Jack gets involved because his wife (Victoria Catlin, GHOULIES, Twin Peaks) notices him sneaking around and suspects him of being the maniac cop. But of course he’s really going to see Theresa. Whoops. Since his wife gets killed by the maniac and left in his hotel room, now it looks like he’s the guy. (read the rest of this shit…)
That’s a good feeling when you watch a movie that you don’t remember being all that special back in the ’80s but now it seems like a gem. Last Halloween that happened to me with FROM BEYOND, this year it was HOUSE (1986).
All I remembered was haunted house, George Wendt (and/or John Ratzenberger), something about Vietnam. Maybe kinda funny. All those things are true except for Ratzenberger, who is in part 2. But the star is 10-years-after-CARRIE William Katt as Cobb, a Stephen-King-level-popularity novelist who’s going through some troubles. First we think it’s just that his old Auntie who raised him (Susan French, JAWS 2) hung herself. Then we find out he’s still hurt by his divorce from a soap star (Kay Lenz, DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN). And writing his memoir is dredging up painful memories of Vietnam (“The war?” a fan asks). And he still hasn’t given up on finding his missing son.
“That’s over with! Those men are in jail. I wish you would just stop dwelling on it!”
Sometimes when you’re on a Slasher Search or a Horror Quest you have to take what seems like an empty barrel, turn it upside down and start banging on the bottom and see if any chunks break off and fall out into the dirt. And if you do that you run the risk of watching something like DEMENTED (1980). From the box it sounded like an I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE rip-off, which is dangerous territory. It’s actually a little weirder than that sounds, but not really in a good way.
Director Arthur Jeffreys has no other credits, which is not surprising, or might mean that it’s a porn director using a fake name. The writer, Alex Rebar, did an obscure Christmas horror called TO ALL A GOODNIGHT, directed by David Hess.
In the opening scene our heroine Linda Rodgers (Sallee Elyse, credited as Sallee Young) comes home and starts petting her horse before suddenly being jumped by a bunch of yahoos with pantyhose on their heads who drag her into the barn and gang rape her. The complete lack of buildup or establishing of characters or story makes it seem even cruder than I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, but at least the rape scene is much shorter and less graphic. (read the rest of this shit…)
David Cronenberg’s THE FLY is about a best case scenario for a remake. It takes the premise of a fun but very dated old sci-fi joint and gives it context, tone and emotional substance more fit for its time of 1986. At the same time it’s a great stealth-Cronenberg movie that was normal enough to be a big hit at the time but artful and weird enough to be different from anything we’d seen before. This was his brief Hollywood period with DEAD ZONE, which was sandwiched between THE BROOD/SCANNERS/VIDEODROME and DEAD RINGERS/NAKED LUNCH/M. BUTTERFLY/CRASH/EXISTENZ/etc.
It starts cute with undiscovered genius Seth Brundle (DEATH WISH‘s Jeff Goldblum) awkwardly hitting on magazine reporter Veronica Quaife (THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT‘s Geena Davis) and somehow getting her back to his lab, which she’s not happy to learn is also his bachelor’s pad. She’s skeptical and probly a little creeped out until he demonstrates what he’s secretly been working on: “telepods,” a set of chambers that can disintegrate matter on one end and reintegrate it on the other. Teleportation. Star Trek shit! He points out that it will revolutionize transportation. In one of the few corny bits in the screenplay by Charles Edward Pogue (PSYCHO III, KULL THE CONQUEROR) we find out Brundle gets car sickness as extra motivation for inventing such a thing. (read the rest of this shit…)
THE BOXER’S OMEN is one of these movies I’ve had recommended to me for years but for some reason never listened. I guess everybody just talked about how FUCKIN CRAZY it was, and I like FUCKIN CRAZY but sometimes a man needs more. For example (HERESY ALERT this paragraph) I couldn’t get into that beloved Japanese freakout available from Criterion, HOUSE or HAUSU. It is indeed unique and goofy and graphically fun, but feature length? I think that’s the ultimate example of a movie that if I stumbled across it on TV at 2 am and had never heard of it it would seem like the greatest achievement in the history of cinema, but when I intentionally sit down to watch it as a real movie I have a hard time getting through it.
Maybe that’s what I was worried BOXER’S OMEN would be. Then I was looking at the box and it said Bolo Yeung was in it so of course I rented it. Why didn’t you say so? (read the rest of this shit…)
“Don’t you see? Senseless violence is not entertainment.” “What is it then?”
I think I saw BRAINSCAN a long time ago and thought it was stupid. And I was right. But watching it again I think I give it a little more credit than I did back then. It’s definitely not of the quality one would hope for from the director of ROLLING THUNDER and the writer of SEVEN. But even in its dated technology (it’s about an evil interactive CD-ROM) it’s kind of ahead of its time, and it has a very ominous tone to it, darker and more unsavory than the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET sequels it was aping.
Like, in the opening scene Michael (Edward “and if you want to shine them on it’s ‘Hasta la vista, baby”” Furlong) is talking to his best bud for life Kyle (Jamie Marsh) on the phone while watching his neighbor Kimberly (Amy Hargreaves from BLUE RUIN) change her shirt. When he comes away from the window he turns on the TV… but then we see that he’s watching her on the TV from a camera he set up. Then he makes a hang up call and watches the footage of her answering in slow motion. At least he’s not jerking off as far as we can see, but jesus. This is our protagonist?
Michael is not that bad a prediction of what life is like for a big chunk of society now. He’s a kid who spends most of his time in his bedroom with his technology. He has a voice activated animated “Igor” on his TV screen that he tells to dial numbers for him or hold his calls or other things. It’s unclear how intelligent it is. He talks on speaker phone and the TV screen shows photo montages of his friends. He’s ahead of his time.
Where he gets this technology is not really spelled out, but his only parental interaction during the movie is a voicemail from his dad telling him he loves him and that “Business is going well here. I wish you were here with me to see all the new equipment.” His mom died in front of him when he was a kid. It still haunts him, and is implied as maybe the reason he’s so attracted to the morbid shit. (read the rest of this shit…)
This one isn’t exactly a slasher movie, but I didn’t know.
Wow, DEATH SPA was not what I expected from a movie about a spa of death. This is a much more professional and imaginative movie than its Fitness Horror forefather KILLER WORKOUT. Sure, it’s completely ridiculous, because it’s about a whole bunch of spectacular deaths at a health club run by a supercomputer. But it’s a little more credible than that sounds, in my opinion. A little.
It opens with a long, show-offy tracking shot in which some of the letters on the STARBODY HEALTH SPA neon light go out so it spells “D EA TH SPA”. And then the first woman we see practicing alone in the dance studio (Brenda Bakke, UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY) seems to have a screen presence and beauty of a caliber much higher than required. I actually thought damn, she should be the lead, but she’s about to get it.
Actually she survives, but is hospitalized for a while and then wears bandages over her eyes. (And remember, Eric Bogosian threatens to burn her eyeball in US2. Coincidence? Yes.) The lead-lead is William Bumiller (LAST RESORT), who has not gone on to canonization in a Seagal film, but who also seems better than the material needs. As spa owner Michael Evans (not based on the actor from Good Times as far as I can tell) he projects rugged, capable, but not dumb. He gets a call about what happened and rushes there in his Porsche between quick flashbacks of somebody on fire. So right away we know he’s got a fairly noteworthy past. (read the rest of this shit…)
KILLER WORKOUT is low budget fitness club horror made by fringe action auteur David A. Prior, so it has by far the most punching I’ve ever seen in a slasher movie. I gotta respect that, at least. Prior did this between KILLZONE and DEADLY PREY. Unlike his horror debut SLEDGEHAMMER it’s not shot on video, which means it meets my rigid standards of a slasher movie I am willing to try to watch.
When a muscley blond guy (Ted Prior, HARDCASE AND FIST) starts working at Rhonda’s Workout the musclier brunette guy (Fritz Matthews) jumps him in the parking lot and they have a bare knuckle brawl. Then it happens a couple more times. Lots of old cowboy style ducking and swinging and getting tossed and knocking over furniture. The blond guy is clearly up to something, it seems from our viewpoint like he must be undercover, but other people suspect he’s there to stalk and murder them. (read the rest of this shit…)
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In the tradition of MANIAC COP 2, MANIAC COP 3: BADGE OF SILENCE begins with footage from the end of the last one. Undead Maniac Cop Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar)’s honor guard funeral is intercut with new scenes of a voodoo priest (Julius Harris, also in Larry Cohen’s BLACK CAESAR) stabbing a head with a ritualistic dagger and chanting. So now we know that part 2’s CARRIE-esque ending is actually a voodoo curse. Man, first Chucky, then Screwface, now this. What the bloodclot, voodoo?
Bruce Campbell and Laurene Landon return for the bigger, I think better MANIAC COP 2. I guess it had a bigger budget than the first one and it has a more confident, cinematic feel. Hats off to cinematographer James Lemmo (who also did the first one, MS. 45, 
MANIAC COP is like an ’80s b-movie dream team. William Lustig (MANIAC) directs, Larry Cohen (IT’S ALIVE!) writes, James Glickenhaus (THE EXECUTIONER, 
That’s a good feeling when you watch a movie that you don’t remember being all that special back in the ’80s but now it seems like a gem. Last Halloween that happened to me with 
“That’s over with! Those men are in jail. I wish you would just stop dwelling on it!”
David Cronenberg’s THE FLY is about a best case scenario for a remake. It takes the premise of a fun but very dated old sci-fi joint and gives it context, tone and emotional substance more fit for its time of 1986. At the same time it’s a great stealth-Cronenberg movie that was normal enough to be a big hit at the time but artful and weird enough to be different from anything we’d seen before. This was his brief Hollywood period with 
THE BOXER’S OMEN is one of these movies I’ve had recommended to me for years but for some reason never listened. I guess everybody just talked about how FUCKIN CRAZY it was, and I like FUCKIN CRAZY but sometimes a man needs more. For example (HERESY ALERT this paragraph) I couldn’t get into that beloved Japanese freakout available from Criterion, HOUSE or HAUSU. It is indeed unique and goofy and graphically fun, but feature length? I think that’s the ultimate example of a movie that if I stumbled across it on TV at 2 am and had never heard of it it would seem like the greatest achievement in the history of cinema, but when I intentionally sit down to watch it as a real movie I have a hard time getting through it.
“Don’t you see? Senseless violence is not entertainment.”
Wow, DEATH SPA was not what I expected from a movie about a spa of death. This is a much more professional and imaginative movie than its Fitness Horror forefather 
KILLER WORKOUT is low budget fitness club horror made by fringe action auteur David A. Prior, so it has by far the most punching I’ve ever seen in a slasher movie. I gotta respect that, at least. Prior did this between KILLZONE and DEADLY PREY. Unlike his horror debut SLEDGEHAMMER it’s not shot on video, which means it meets my rigid standards of a slasher movie I am willing to try to watch.
