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Maniac William Lustig 1980 USA

This film was such a big disappointment to myself. After hearing such great things about this movie especially with Savini handling the gore I was sure this wasn't going to be a misfire. Joe Spinell plays a moronic psycho whose mother badly abused him as a child and her memories still haunt him. He spends his days killing women (some men) and using the female scalps to dress up his mannequins. Savini's literally exploding head (he played the victim in the film) was the only gore highlight or even regular highlight of the whole film.

There's some bland stabbing and garroting along with the particularly dumb death of Spinell, which may only be an illusion where his mannequins come to life and kill him (the decapitation was laughably fake). The Prowler has better gore than this and an equally good exploding head. See it instead. This Elite version had a number of annoying trailers at the end for the film, scenes from an equally lame unreleased Maniac 2 and an unnecessarily cut out scene in the original. Baaaaaad!

Rating: 2 Skulls

Richard J.Taylor