Maniac (1980)

William Lustig’s Maniac is one of those lurid video-store staples that all horror fans seem to know about, at least by reputation. Starring the inimitable Joe Spinell as the titular maniac, the movie tells the story of a man overtaken by the inner demons of a bad upbringing. For reasons that are never quite explained, Frank Zito (Spinell) goes out night after night and murders young women and scalps them, bringing their hair back to his apartment where he attaches them to mannequins so that they can be with him forever.

We find out through Frank’s inner monologue that while Frank doesn’t necessarily feel sorry for his victims, he’s not particularly proud of himself for doing what he does. Flashbacks to an abusive childhood and abandonment at a young age help to flesh out Frank’s issues but far from explain them.

Weirdly, as greasy and weird as Spinell manages to make the character look we see that Frank can in fact take a shower, comb his hair, and be a fairly affable and charming person when he wants to be. Maybe the movie makes women a bit too infatuated with him off the bat but for the most part he seems to be able to act like a nice and harmless gentleman when not in the grips of his dark obsession.

The movie is fairly stripped down, little more than a series of gruesome murder scenes with little bits of narrative to string them together before a truly bizarre conclusion, but the little bits we get seem to suggest so much more that the movie is very compelling and surprisingly deep for what it could have been.

Maniac (2012)

From the director of P2 comes a remake that really shouldn’t be this good. Maniac bizarrely positions Elijah Wood in the Joe Spinell role. Now with a more conventionally handsome lead we have a paper-thin excuse for why so many women might trust this socially inept weirdo. Wood’s Frank doesn’t have Spinell’s easy charm, he acts pretty openly suspicious in public but people seem to hand-wave it.

The big gimmick here is that basically the entire movie is shot in slasher-vision, the first person view of a lot of killers in slasher movies (though this method wasn’t used in the original Maniac). This trick adds an interesting depth to movie as we’re literally seeing everything from Wood’s perspective and getting some idea of what makes him tick.

The gore is a lot more digital here but the more frenetic camera mostly covers this up. There’s nothing quite as iconic as the shotgun scene from the original movie but the outlandish climax is even more gruesome here than in the original even if it does end on a sort of pretentious note that the original movie didn’t have.

Is it a good remake?

It’s a great remake, one that serves not just as a capable re-imagining but as a companion to the original film. I still like the way that Spinell’s Frank was handled better than Wood’s. The original set-up felt more organic and close to real life, the dialogue felt more naturalistic and the people behaved a bit more like people actually behave. (Nobody has ever gotten a date on a dating site talking like that, and even if you did some nice girl isn’t going to ask you to drive her home after you’ve had an episode in a restaurant)

Does it stand on its own?

Yes, you can watch 2012’s Maniac without seeing or even knowing about the original. It’s a good movie in its own right and Wood really carries himself as a complex and complicated character with a lot of emotion, and he does this while not even being onscreen for a good chunk of the runtime.

Watch, Toss, or Buy?

Buy it.