There are an endless number of Horror franchises out there. Some big, some small. Quite a few of them I have only seen the first movie and never got around to the sequels. One such movie is Maniac Cop. The original movie starred Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell and Laurene Landon and ended with the apparent demise of the titular character in a watery grave at the end. Of course anyone that watched Horror movies in the 80’s knows that’s basically a guarantee of a return in a sequel and so here we are!
Director William Lustig (Who also directed “Maniac” which I’ll be reviewing later in October) and Writer Larry Cohen both return for this sequel and so it’s no surprise to find it continues directly on from the end of the first film and see’s the return of both Campbell and Landon. However the leads for this movie are actually Robert Davi (One of my favourite Bond Villains) and Claudia Christian (Of “Babylon 5” fame, but also made an appearance in my October Horrothon last year in “The Hidden” (1987)). Lustig has a habit of swerving with his leads and never hesitates to kill one off for shock value, so expect this movie to follow that pattern (Though I’m not dropping direct spoilers).
Cunning Stunts
The first thing to note here is I like the way the story is continued. It’s difficult to cover without spoilers, but it’s worthy of note for a horror sequel to maintain such solid continuity. Of course it helps when you have the same writer and director, but it’s certainly refreshing. The second thing to note is the stunts. For a 1990 horror movie, it is somewhat surprising in the number and quality of stunts here.
There is a very solid car chase, a scene where Claudia Christian (Or rather her stunt double) is handcuffed outside an out of control car and has to somehow try and steer it while being flung around and last but not least there is a climax that features a lot of stunt men being set on fire, with the killer himself spending a lot of time wondering around while on fire! It’s pretty impressive for a $4m horror film ($9m with inflation). The movie also features a “Terminator” like scene where Cordell invades the police station and clears house. Basically lots of cool stuff to enjoy visually in this.
Cops and Killers
Character wise the movie revolves primarily around four characters. Claudia Christians “Susan Riley”, Robert Davi’s “Detective McKinney”, The Maniac Cop “Matt Cordell” (Played by Robert Z’Dar, who the following year would become an even more infamous cop in “Samurai Cop”) and Leo Rossi’s “Turkel”, a serial killer that has been murdering local strippers. Davi puts in a pretty neutral performance and seems less interested in the movie the further on it goes, Rossi overacts, though given his character is a psycho it mostly works and Christian puts in a solid performance hitting all the right notes when requires.
The real protagonist of the story though is Cordell and Z’Dar does a pretty decent job given he’s playing a zombie cop. The other three are just there to move the plot on as required. McKinney is the hero of the day, but not because of any challenge he had to overcome and he doesn’t face off with Cordell or really have any notable action scenes, he just helps clear Cordells name (At least clear his name pre-zombie-psycho-rampage). Susan’s importance largely rolls off for the final act, while Turkel turns up half way through and is only really there to be manipulated. His character has the least depth of the four, but he doesn’t really need any for the plot to work.
Conclusion
Overall, this is a surprisingly good sequel to a moderately decent 80’s slasher. I think I may even prefer it to the original. My only real negative is I would have liked to have seen more of Bruce Campbell, but then since this is after Evil Dead 2 it probably would have taken too much attention away from the killer, so perhaps it’s for the best. Largely for the cool factor and the stunts this just about reaches 6.5/10.
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