{"id":980,"date":"2008-10-10T22:01:05","date_gmt":"2008-10-11T02:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=980"},"modified":"2015-10-02T16:06:14","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T21:06:14","slug":"maniac-cop-1988-william-lustig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/980","title":{"rendered":"Maniac Cop (1988, William Lustig)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was hoping for another inventive cult-classic a la Brain Damage<\/a><\/em> or writer Larry Cohen’s The Stuff<\/em>, but I got your standard, straightforward, low-budget horror-thriller with no invention or visual flair whatsoever.<\/p>\n

There’s even nothing special about the performances, which is a real crime considering it stars Bruce Campbell (between Evil Deads<\/em> 2 and 3), Tom Atkins (the cop in Night of the Creeps!<\/em>), Richard Roundtree (Shaft!<\/em>) and, um, Laurene Landon (It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive<\/em>). Robert (“oh, z’no!”) Z’Dar is the titular cop and Sheree North (starred in Frank Tashlin’s The Lieutenant Wore Skirts<\/a><\/em> 30 years earlier) is his crazy caretaker.<\/p>\n

A maniac cop is terrorizing the city! Cop Bruce Campbell is cheating on his wife with a fellow cop, but surprisingly this is okay with the movie and Bruce’s wife is killed instead, the killer (actually his smarter mother-figure who works at police headquarters and tells him what to do) attempting to pin the murders on Bruce. There’s a making-of-the-monster backstory, lots more people are killed, then Bruce busts out of jail and chases the maniac cop, who accidentally kills himself… but is he really<\/strong> dead??? Spoiler alert: no.<\/p>\n

Bruce Campbell didn’t do it, nobody saw him do it, you can’t prove anything<\/em>
\n\"image\"<\/p>\n

Tom Atkins’ gun is a tiny film projector<\/em>
\n\"image\"<\/p>\n

Sam Raimi, reporter<\/em>
\n\"image\"<\/p>\n

The only novelty death: man’s face shoved in wet concrete<\/em>
\n\"image\"<\/p>\n

This was huge-faced Z’Dar’s big break, landing him the highly desirable role of Joe Estevez’s sidekick in Soultaker two years later<\/em>
\n\"image\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was hoping for another inventive cult-classic a la Brain Damage or writer Larry Cohen’s The Stuff, but I got your standard, straightforward, low-budget horror-thriller with no invention or visual flair whatsoever. There’s even nothing special about the performances, which is a real crime considering it stars Bruce Campbell (between Evil Deads 2 and 3), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[605,54,61,361,499,138],"class_list":["post-980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-bruce-campbell","tag-horror","tag-larry-cohen","tag-new-york","tag-police-brutality","tag-sam-raimi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10418,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions\/10418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}