Maniac Cop

A typical late 1980s B-movie that went straight to video, with all the pros and cons that come with it. Cohen's script is not great, but director Lustig learned a lot from Sam Raimi, and so the dark atmosphere of nighttime N.Y., where innocent citizens are mowed down by a uniformed officer, is ultimately the film's greatest asset. There’s a decent amount of blood, the murders are well thought out, and only the final hand on the pier doesn't bode well. Normally, it would have left my mind after a few days, but for my distant nostalgic memory of begging to watch this film (as the title and original VHS cover had already inspired a sacred terror in my childhood soul), I'll give it 4 stars. (16/07/2007)

Unfortunately, Maniac Cop is a case of concept winning out over content. Or perhaps I just made a mistake in letting the film’s hype build up for too long. When the whole series was released on VHS in the nineties, the Video Plus website was decorated with attractive photos of ruthless, zombified cops, which burrowed deeply into my juvenile memory. But my parents’ unwillingness to purchase videos and the different genre preferences of my friends who had VHS players meant that I had to defer settling that debt from my youth until I reached a more advanced age. And how disappointed I was when I found out that Maniac Cop is actually just a completely mediocre trash flick in which the obvious inspiration from Terminator is mixed with the period fashion of living corpses and there placement in the most bizarre genre positions. Even the spectre of the fascist enforcer of state power that terrifies the people of New York turns out to be completely beyond the pale. (17/09/2013)