In short: Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence (1993)

Turns out the revival of maniac cop Matt Cordell (always Robert Z’Dar) at the end of Maniac Cop 2 is the responsibility of some New York voodoo priest. He needs Cordell for something vague and hand wave-y to do with justice, apparently, though the undead cop will still spend the movie killing the guilty and the innocent alike, so no idea what’s going on there.

Cordell will show – probably (nec)romantic - interest in Katie Sullivan (Gretchen Becker), a cop who spends most of the film in a coma after getting shot. She just happens to be a protégé of Sean McKinney (Robert Davi), so the whiny cop is back with us again. She’s also framed for killing and innocent who was anything but, but given that here nickname is Maniac Katie, and she polices New York with a sub-machine gun and hollow point bullets, she’s not exactly the innocent victim of circumstance hear. Cordell’s implied search for a bride leads to him spending most of his killing time in and around the hospital she is in. McKinney obviously takes an interest.

Ah, how far the dynamic duo of Larry Cohen and William Lustig has fallen, not only from the heights of not only the wondrous Maniac Cop 2 but also the pretty entertaining original Maniac Cop! There are a couple of interesting ideas hidden away in the script here – the whole pseudo-romantic angle at least gives us a nice dream sequence – but none of them is developed at all. It’s all random goofy shit all the time, but unlike with the last film, the goofy shit isn’t cleverly embedded between sleazy New York and insane stunt work. Well, we get some of the latter in the final couple of scenes, but the whole scope of the film seems much reduced since the last time out, and the plot and pacing meander in many directions, none of them much fun to witness. Well, I enjoyed Robert Forster’s little outing as the vilest physician (shortly) alive.

The film as a whole feels reduced, in fact, not just because of the comparative dearth of action, and the lack of Claudia Christian. Cordell’s killing spree feels rather lackluster too this time, and for much of the film’s running time, he could be any third row slasher killing himself through an improbable hospital. Why, even Cohen’s dialogue isn’t as fun as it usually is.


There’s just too little of interest going on here at all, so I’m happy enough the series ended with this, before Cordell could be kung-fu kicked to death by Bustah Rhymes.

Maniac Cop 2 (1990)

Formerly half-undead serial killer cop Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar) is back from his watery grave, now even more dead, and still so angry about being framed for crimes he didn’t commit by THEM and then being murdered in prison, he is still murdering basically everyone he meets. In fact, he seems to put little effort at all into seeking out the political higher ups responsible for his fate and only in the very end of the film gets around to kill off their pawns. As an undead seeker of vengeance, Cordell’s not terribly impressive. He’s great at killing random people, though.

Because he has so much time off, Cordell uses the film’s first act to kill off the heroes of the first Maniac Cop (bye, Bruce Campbell, so long, Laurene Landon!), leaving the audience to the tender mercies of whiny, self-righteous, hard-ass cop Sean McKinney (Robert Davi) and police psychologist Susan Riley (Claudia Christian) as our new protagonists. After the usual dance of scepticism and mutual dislike, these two team up to get Cordell off the street and clear his name. Because that’s important after the dozens of innocents the zombie cop has slaughtered.

Cordell doesn’t want to be left out of the partnering up business this time around, so he shacks up with serial killer of Times Square strippers Turkell (Leo Rossi, wearing some sort of hilarious alien hair mop creature on and over his head, looking for all the world like one of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers).

As sarcastic as I may sound above, I really had a hell of an entertaining time watching the second of the three Maniac Cop movies from the dynamic duo of that great New York writer/director/producer Larry Cohen (only writing and producing here), and that loveable, semi-great sleazebag William Lustig. The plot makes little sense – though you can see the vague shapes of the sense it is probably supposed to make – but every scene here is basically written to provide either some intensely goofy shit (the scenes of Turkell and Cordell showing each other their knives, and Landon’s short chainsaw fight against Cordell stand as obvious examples), provide Lustig with opportunity to wallow in by 1990 old-school New York sleaze, or win the audience’s hearts with insane stunts and absurd violence.

As such, the film is a raving success. The goofy shit is indeed goofy as heck, New York has seldom looked more like some sort of crazy nightmare built out of trash and human desperation, and the action scenes are insane and gritty in idea and execution. Because Cohen and Lustig know and love actors, the film also contains a ream of fun performances. Even the in theory utterly unlikeable McKinney becomes great entertainment in the hands of Davi who is after all one of the guys who wrote the book on playing these types of characters in low budget films, and Christian pretty much wins my heart by playing her character absolutely straight even though she’s moving through a world made out of absurd nonsense.

Adding even more value to the whole proposition is Cohen’s patented dialogue that sounds sharp and fun (and often funny) in a way which tempts one to talk of realism; in truth nobody does talk like a character written by Larry Cohen, of course. It’s rather that one feels this version of New York should be populated by people talking this way, so there’s a feeling of veracity to the dialogue. Which beats boring realism any day.


Indeed, all of this adds up so well I hands-down prefer Maniac Cop 2 to the first one by a mile or two, and that even though it uses one of my least favourite horror movie tropes by killing the first film’s heroes off in the first act. But then, Davi/Christian are much more entertaining than the original pair (sorry, Mr Campbell), and the rest of the film clearly sets out to outdo the first one in everything, from grime to explosions, and succeeds wonderfully.

In short: Vigilante (1983)

Industrial electrician Eddie Marino (Robert Forster) is your typical mild-mannered family man, until a gang more or less randomly hurts his wife and kills his little son. Although his colleague Nick (Fred Williamson) tries to recruit Eddie for his own little vigilante crusade, the man decides to let the justice system run its course.

Of course, this being a movie called Vigilante and all, "the system" is totally corrupt, and the only gang member that is indicted at all comes away with a suspended sentence of two years. The only one actually landing in jail is Eddie himself for his violently displeased conduct in the court room. With the help of a randomly helpful Woody Strode, Eddie survives his thirty days in jail.

All the while, the film has kept the audience up to date on the dubious achievement of Nick and his merry band of thugs. They seem quite adept at torturing and killing people. It's the American Way, I know.

When Eddie is released, he at once goes to Nick and asks the chief vigilante for some help in a little murder spree of his own.

William Lustig's Vigilante is a technically well done version of your typical vigilante film, with all the usual problems of the genre, especially an annoying tendency to bore the viewer with long self-righteous speeches that are supposed to convince the viewer of the rightness of going on private killing sprees, but mostly succeed in dragging down the movie's pace and insulting me through their stupidity.

Vigilante isn't all stupid all the time though. The film has a lot of small moments and gestures that strongly hint at a discomfort with the actions of its supposed heroes, suggesting that Nick and Eddie are as violently unhinged as the people they are going after. Which they are. These moments make a strange contrast with Nick's speeches and the emotionally manipulative way Lustig sets up the court session. It feels as if one half of the film is cheerleading for vigilantism and the other, less loud half, is convinced of its utter uselessness.

What the film features in any case are very strong appearances of its lead actors. Forster and Williamson and their all-cult-movie-star supporting cast are giving the sort of shaded performances that hint at disquieting depths and breaking-points in the characters they are playing. This aspect puts Vigilante more in the tradition of Italian cop and vigilante movies of the 70s, and I wouldn't be surprised if Lustig had planned his film as an homage to those films.

Unfortunately, Lustig is no Enzo G. Castellari, and although the film's action is appropriately dry and mean, the American just isn't as good at handling the dramatic parts of the movie, even though the actors are doing everything possible to hand them to him on a silver platter. At times, the film seems to be too interested in bloviating about the evils of "the system", instead of basing its violence on the inner lives of characters who would provide ample opportunity for it.

The pacing of the non-violent scenes is just a little bit off, too, throwing the film out of its rhythm repeatedly by going on just a little too long to keep the film's momentum going.

Lustig's movie is not bad, it's just not as good as the movies it seems to base itself on.

 

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