Article: First Watch of Maniac Cop

I always remember the poster of Maniac Cop being slapped up on independent video shops in my town. A dark, mean-looking poster that promised horrible things would happen in the movie. “You have the right to remain silent…FOREVER!” What a tagline. Such succulent marketing. Was there any doubt about the type of movie that you were going to get? 

Indeed, grim events do take in Maniac Cop, an exploitation feature that is part procedural, part authoritative corruption, pulled down a supernatural slasher film funnel. The film is lean and mean and doesn’t like to hang around. Yet despite its short run time, a glut of intriguing themes are pulled from its plot. Situated in 80s New York, a volatile period when the city was still in a mode of economic and societal recovery, Maniac Cop delivers slight but pointed commentary on ideas of police brutality and corruption.  Asking the question: What would happen to a Dirty Harry-style cop if the hierarchy started to turn the screws on their antics. Nothing has time to be explored with any complexity. But while it’s not academic it certainly feels like it wants to prod at the thin blue line.

Detective Frank McCrae (Tom Akins) begins an investigation into a series of brutal murders which at first seemingly have no pattern yet have enough clues to convince the officer that the killings are coming from one of their own. Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell) fits the bill of the killer at large and is taken in under suspicion. However, when the attacks are still occurring, it falls to Forrest, McCrae, and Forrest’s partner Theresa (Laurene Landon) to find out what’s happening. 

Maniac Cop is the creation of filmmaker William Lustig. Director of low-budget, exploitation features such as Maniac (1980) and Vigilante (1982).  Maniac Cop is perhaps Lustig's most well-known feature, becoming a cult hit in the 80s and succeeded by two sequels after the 1988 original. It’s easy to see Maniac Cop did so well. While it may be an exploitation vehicle at heart, the film is still a well-made piece of trash. For a low-budget movie that may not even reach 90 minutes without its end credits, Maniac Cop packs a lot into its characters, while handling some effective set pieces. Nothing outstays its welcome, which makes it understandable why some people expected more meat on the film’s bones. 

Yet Maniac Cop is a film that is succulent with some of the things that it says. The film’s first murder feels unnerving not least for the victim, Cassie, to mention nonchalantly to her Bar colleagues: “I’d rather face the muggers” when someone cracks wise about her leaving the establishment. She is then chased by some would-be thieves before running into the Maniac Cop.  Glimpsing the uniform, Cassie believes she is safe, only to meet a ruthless and violent end. It’s a moment that reaches into something quite primitive. When people see the authorities, they expect safety. 

The film plays on this well. 15 minutes in and tension in the city is so high enough that citizens are more than willing to unload on police folk. Unfortunately, due to how the city goes about its policing, the film happily suggests that this is the NYPD’s own doing. When a black kid on TV is interviewed at one point, he is frank:

“I’ve seen plenty of my friends murdered by cops. Shot in the back, shot when they didn’t have a gun or a knife, claiming the suspect had a shiny object. You know, Cops like killing…That’s why they’re cops…who’s gonna be next?!”

The lines don’t appear in the quote section of the film’s IMDB page, yet they feel like a haunting precursor to recent history. When Cassie is examined by the coroner after her death, another officer is flippant that a cop would do such a thing. And yet, we know that officers can and will. Watching the news says enough. 

I was a little upset to see reviewers being as sour on the movie as they were. Perhaps due to the expectation of the film to be more for what it is. It’s a film that is quite serious and cynical at times but never really penetrates any of its topics with any academic depth. It’s an exploitation B-movie through and through, but it’s not as outrageous as one may expect from its premise. I can’t say I didn’t expect slightly more from its premise, but as a trimly cut action horror, it’s solid in a way direct-to-stream movies of the modern ages are not. It’s uncomplicated, uncompromising and far better crafted than it gets credit for. I do not expect the logic of a possibly supernatural cop to hold up well. However, I will praise the subversive nature of casting the man who would risk his neck for his brother man as a corrupt and calculating commissioner. I’m also willing to forgive the film's lack of extreme violence for its simple, yet effective set pieces. There’s something I find profoundly ominous about a cop terrorising a couple at a deserted traffic stop. The idea of having to drag a dying cop who’s handcuffed to you has an odd chill to it too.

But what perhaps made Maniac Cop work the most for me is the sense that everyone in the production is looking to do a little with the little they have via resources. This is a movie that has a strong visual style visually. The night scenes are solid, while the action has a good sense of geography. The cast know the kind of movie they’re in and act accordingly with Bruce Campbell showing himself to be a far more vulnerable leading man than he’s ever really had the chance to showcase. Far from the gloopy pratfalls of The Evil Dead series, Campbell shows off the B-movie acting chops fans have always loved him for. He’s flawed, angry, and a little sensitive. It works. 

It's a shame that not all of it pays off. The film’s slenderness ensures some head-scratching. However, watching Maniac Cop in the current era feels fresh. The film feels like it wants to take a few jabs at the establishment while being a Friday-night actioner and a slasher movie. The film hedges its bets a little. But that said, I’ve been told that the second film is the thing to see. And there are enough good things in Maniac Cop to place its sequel higher up on my watchlist. And if a movie is entertaining enough to do that, then it’s worth a watch.    

Maniac Cop is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. 

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Review: Street Trash

Year: 2024 (UK Release 2025)

Director: Ryan Kruger

Screenplay: Ryan Kruger, James C Williamson, Roy Frumkes

Starring: Sean Cameron Michael, Donna Cormack-Thomson, Joe Vaz

Synopsis is here

In the age of content rehashing, it’s difficult to watch a remake of a cult hit without feeling a pang of cynicism. The first question on the lips is often “What’s the purpose of this?” with the answer being the IP being cheap far too often. The original Street Trash was an infamous 80s exploitation feature, part of an extremely specific pool of films described as “melt movies”. In these movies, toxic substances or similar materials would simply liquify characters in the movie into thick, viscous gloop. The original Street Trash played out like a series of vignettes in which a group of unhoused people fall afoul of some toxic alcohol and begin to disintegrate. There’s some vague plot involving a violent leader of a gang experiencing Vietnam flashbacks, however, the film is more of an exercise in offence, while also drawing focus on a sub-culture of people who were left out of mainstream cinema's indulgence in excess. Ryan Kruger's remake tries to delve into similar annals of shock value but is held together with more plot threads.

The year is 2050 and Cape Town is experiencing a gilded age. A large sector of the city is now homeless, with a smaller segment still being able to live well.  The city’s major has come up with a scheme to wash away the city’s homeless problem: melt them with drones. It falls to Ronald and his rag-tag group of friends to risk all they can and fight against a society and government who wish to exterminate them.

Whereas the original Street Trash dealt with neglect of the poor, this new remake has a lot more to say about the Government just plain wanting them dead. Street Trash redux makes some smart plays in its back pocket. Moving the action from Brooklyn to Cape Town has a lot more immediacy. The conspiratorial focus on shady government types looking to kill off the poor with toxic spraying drones holds a kernel of relevancy within its far-fetched shell. It’s chaotic multi-channel montage opening riffs on films like Robocop (1987) and District 9 (2009), and the general feeling is that the film isn’t merely giving you the same thing as before with a spit shine. Street Trash redux keeps the nostalgia pandering low and does what it can to stand outside its predecessor’s shadow.

However, the original Street Trash was cult for a reason. Its incessant need to try and offend with puerile humour got grating fast. The best thing going for it is its visuals and effects. The original has a decent moment of craft behind it. Even though it fills the screen with bland casual racism/sexism, it does so with a strong amount of visual flair. There was also a sincerity to its boorishness. This new version tries to follow suit but suffers from being born into a brave new world. Its attempts to be un-PC are even worse. Not because it’s more offensive. Considering the film is set in South Africa, the new trash feels more sensitive to race than the Brooklyn Trash, with the distinct feeling that the filmmakers were worried about watchful eyes. The original Street Trash’s humour felt baked in and organic. There was a devil-may-care nature to the original film that the second film doesn’t feel brave enough to ascribe to.  

The most effective thing about the new Trash is that it has more gloop, gore and violence. Kruger has more resources allowing him to invest in more florescent gut-busting. There’s a lot of Friday night beer fun to have while watching the film's effects. The film's main plot, while still scattershot, is still tighter than the original film, with the narrative lending itself to films like Brian Yuzna’s Society (1989). However, despite this, while consistency wasn’t a major part of the original trash, it certainly felt less scattershot. Kruger’s film is happy flinging things at the wall to see what sticks, including imaginary friends, Peep Show-like characters only seen in first person perspective, and surprisingly more stakes. Donna Cormack-Thomson’s female lead is seemingly in place to be an audience surrogate and give more emotional heft. It’s hard not to feel like her character is here to have people forget how badly the women in the original film were treated. That said, the more disintegrating bodies also look like they’re trying to do the same thing.

There’s still a small amount of fun to be had in places. The performances have a lot of gusto, while some of the more deadpan lines are also tittersome. And while visually the new Trash doesn’t have the same energy as the original, the film looks good for the most part. However, it’s probably not enough to recommend Street Trash. Its social relevance is welcomed, but it doesn’t have that much to say. The film has some bad taste but feels reluctant to go full throttle with things. But ultimately while Street Trash gives itself enough purpose to separate itself from its original movie, there’s not enough here to make it that memorable.

Street Trash will be in UK Cinemas from 10th January and on Digital and Blu-Ray from February 17th

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Article: Re-possessed by The Evil Dead

I remember at school, in English class, a pirated copy of The Evil Dead being exchanged between two schoolmates. It’s a memory that has gained more prominence in my mind because I’m still old enough to remember The Evil Dead as a forbidden fruit of cinema in Britain. Still a prohibited item of pleasure. The year the ban was removed (2001) still feels fresh. Not over two decades ago as the cold hand of time shows. Nowadays, in terms of movie consumption, it’s harder to obtain legal copies of certain romantic comedies than a horror film which was once labelled by Stephen King as "The most ferociously original horror film of the year."

Because of its status as one of the more notorious “video nasties” of Britain, it’s little surprise that The Evil Dead is a formative, gateway horror. There is a reason it got passed between blazers and bags by teenagers before their lessons started. Evil Dead was one of the movies I had a VHS recording of in the early 00s, once it was allowed back on British T.V. screens. To see it in some sort of flayed recorded form was a rite of passage because, to a lot of people, it had been contraband for so long. However, when the BBFC shifted along with societal attitudes in the new millennium, The Evil Dead was a DVD that I quickly snatched up. Said disc is the one I viewed for this write-up. That is perhaps two decades old at this point.

There’s beauty in simplicity and perhaps one of the reasons The Evil Dead has endured for as long as it has is down to how elementary it all is. Five friends travel to a cabin in the woods for a vacation. Upon arrival, they discover the Necronomicon a.k.a The Book of the Dead and some recording materials. Once the audio tape is played back, a primal evil is unleashed with the intent to possess each member of the group before the night is over. That’s it. There isn’t much more to it. Due to this, The Evil Dead is an impactful experience as there is no fat to trim. Once the chaos starts, it doesn’t let up. For its characters, they will be tortured. For the audience, they must endure the gruelling experience.  

The minuscule budget from which The Evil Dead was created is as startling as its cultural impact. The film’s budget was $375.000. Adjusted for inflation and exchanged into pounds and it’s still not even 10% of Erling Haaland’s annual salary for Manchester City Football Club. It was a budget swiftly dwarfed by other movies, in an era defined by excess. Yet still, it is cited as one of the most successful independent movies ever. The Evil Dead didn’t just launch the careers of its director Sam Rami and main star Bruce Campbell, but when you peer at the film's end credits, you spy the name of Joel Coen in the credits. As editor, it was one of Joel’s first movie jobs. What’s amusing is seeing the dynamic “shaky cam” effect, used to symbolise the rampaging titular evil in this film, being used by the Coen’s to very different effect in both Blood Simple and Raising Arizona. Techniques such as Shaky Cam are not only part of the film’s ramshackle charm but are also the secret spice that elevates Rami’s low-budget horror shenanigans, from other wannabe successful horror fare.

The budget limitations of Evil Dead are clear from the start. Shot on 16mm film stock, the film has the fuzzy vibe of many of the cheaper horror films of its ilk. We are promptly introduced to a scruffy ensemble of youths, with Scotty, acting as the de facto leader. Ash is the only other male. The three women who round up the group are Ash’s sister Cheryl, Scotty’s girlfriend Shelly, and Ash’s girlfriend Linda. Unfortunately, the lean script does little to build up the female characters, with only Cheryl’s stern tone, and Linda’s playfulness with Ash being the only real descriptors. The film’s beginnings suggest that it’s little more than what it’s always been considered: A group of friends decide to go up into the woods and make a movie. Here lies the deception. The Evil Dead is a movie that inspires people to want to make their own movies because filmmaking looks so easy. Just grab a camera and go. Fast forward a few generations to the smartphone age and The Evil Dead looks even more quaint. Just look at what we can do with our mobile phones.

Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, however, there’s much more going on under the hood. The Evil Dead, the two films have their imitators, but rarely do they compare. Because rarely are these replicants made by filmmakers with such vision as Tobe Hooper or Evil Dead’s Sam Raimi. The Evil Dead’s ferocity perhaps stems from its creator’s single-mindedness. The Evil Dead’s shoot was notoriously troubled. Principal photography featured painfully thick contact lenses, getting lost due to the remote location, and difficulties in securing medical help for injuries. This all seemed par of the course for Raimi, who had no qualms about putting people through the wringer. This becomes more apparent in Evil Dead 2 (1987) when Slapstick and Bruce Campbell finally collide. Raimi seems to be a disciple of an adage many want to dispel: That a little suffering does the art good.

While most would like to be entertained without the discomfort factor, it feels safe to say that Raimi’s gleeful torture of his cast and crew mixed with Raimi’s creative flair is what makes Evil Dead stand out. Its budget may not even cover the catering of the larger blockbusters Raimi was able to helm, but few low-budget features manage to meld a visual style of EC comics and Three Stooges-like chaos as Raimi does here. Once the Necronomicon is open and the spirits are let loose, the film delivers an onslaught of demonic abject, with the viewer subjected to an array of beheadings, ankle stabbings and possessed tree rape. Over 40 years on, there’s still little that matches the combination of energy and gore. There are films which may match the frenzied approach. There’s certainly an abundance of gore-fuelled features. However, none ever seem to capture the balance that The Evil Dead has. It’s an organised chaos that one would consider lightning in a bottle if it weren’t for Raimi finessing the frenzy for the film’s sequel. But it’s a testament to the filmmaker who had his signature style dialled in so quickly.  

It shouldn’t be any wonder why the Raimi-helmed Spider-Man film series is still held in stronger regard by a film fan than the other two franchise attempts that came after it. The comic book zeal found in Raimi’s Spider-Man films could be seen in the likes of his original comic book style idea Darkman (1990). With that confidence also being seen in 2002 Spider-Man resides in The Evil Dead. Raimi’s kinetic energy overrides the lack of budget. There isn’t a feeling of merely throwing something at the wall and seeing if it sticks. The Evil Dead works because of its conviction. From the gloopy set-pieces to the jump scares, even if the filmmakers weren’t sure something would work, it doesn’t affect the on-screen outcome. The intensity and hilarity shine through.

It's amusing to look at reviews that felt more than indifference to The Evil Dead. The transgressive nature and abject weirdness injected into a typical cabin-in-the-woods story didn’t win everyone over. A 2018 retrospective in The Guardian, written by Steve Rose, compliments its filmmaking but is less fond of the film’s treatment of women. Rose states the punishment inflicted on the women of the film is unsettling, while Bruce Campbell is framed as the “final girl” who gets to “reclaim his masculinity”. Rose brings up a fair point about the underwritten nature of the women in the film. While the feral tactility of the “tree rape” scene still ensures the sequence is more than a little queasy. Yet even with this scene, one can’t say that the film focuses any explicit delight in the so-called punishment of any character, save for Campbell’s Ash who doesn’t regain his masculinity in this first film.  This changes in the Evil Dead sequel, in which the first 20 minutes of that film is a remixed rehash of its predecessor. Ash is redrawn as someone with far more defined macho characteristics, while the new character of Annie is given far more to do. Although this may still fall short by 2000s film Twitter standards.

One wonders if Rose looked back at Clive James’ view of the film. Writing in 1984 for The Guardian’s sister paper The Observer, James, delivers a savage beatdown on the film, considering it unscary for anyone but idiots. However, his dry commentary on the women in the film seems rather unfortunate:

“ When the zombie erupts from the prop leaf-mold and comes lurching through the dry ice fumes in search of the vaguely classy girl who would resemble Glenn Close if she were better looking and could keep her clothes on, we decline to be alarmed because we are too busy wondering why the silly cow agreed to stay the night, the surrounding territory being so obviously crammed with recumbent zombies.”

Reading this critique now not only feels retrograde but also glosses over some of the film’s narrative. The Evil Dead’s plotting may be threadbare, but there is detail on why the characters remain at the cabin. James’ famous sardonic brand of wit falls a little flat here. The rest of the review is very funny. Although this writer doesn’t agree with the verdict.

But The Evil Dead is a genre movie which changed the game for horror. In Street Trash (1987), the film pulls Steadicam's move which feels so directly lifted from The Evil Dead’s Shaky Cam that if Raimi sued, no one would object. Evil Dead’s influence would turn up in sitcoms like Spaced (1999), to meta-horror pieces like The Cabin in the Woods (2011). It’s a film that may look as cheap as chips, but its visceral ingenuity makes the film endlessly re-watchable. It’s not just the canted angles and mounds of gore; it’s the balance of tone throughout the chaos. It finds comedic nuggets throughout its running time. Something that many more comedy-minded horrors struggle with. While Ash and his friends aren’t the most complex individuals, they hold more innocence than many protagonists in younger features. There’s a Coen-like streak within The Evil Dead films. While the creators enjoy inflicting misery on the characters, they remain endearing to the film’s audience.

After The Evil Dead, a young Peter Jackson found infamy with his splatter period of movies, a trio of low-budget, high-gore affairs that appear to have been influenced by Raimi’s ‘Dead’ movies. Like Raimi, Jackson’s earlier features helped springboard him into making larger fare before directing The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003). Amusingly, the battle of Helms Deep has been noted for its uncanny resemblance to parts of Army of Darkness, the third Evil Dead movie. Raimi broke the bank and set the trend with his version of Spider-Man (2002). What’s becoming more bittersweet for film writers like me however is how we’re seeing the likes of Jackson and Raimi, who built themselves up via low-budget schlock-fests and found themselves being able to lace their ideocratic styles into Hollywood blockbusters with much success. From video nasties to mainstream mainstays, it’s difficult to see if things like this happen as much as they did. Getting a Blu-ray copy of The Heartbreak Kid (1972) seems easier.

The Evil Dead is currently streaming on various platforms. However, find a bootleg VHS copy for the lolz

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