Entry Thirty-Eight: Maniac Cop (1988)

Maniac Cop (1988)

Dir: William Lustig

"You have the right to remain silent...forever."

This one's a real winner, folks; a dream-team of 80's NYC genre creators (writer Larry (It's Alive, Q, The Stuff) Cohen, producer James (The Exterminator, Shakedown) Glickenhaus and director William (Maniac, Vigilante) Lustig) working with an UNBELIEVABLE cast: Tom "Night of the Creeps" Atkins, Bruce "Evil Dead" Campbell, Richard "Shaft" Roundtree, William "Conan the Barbarian" Smith, Laurene "I, the Jury" Landon and Robert "Samurai Cop" Z'Dar to produce a lean, mean action thriller!

When his estranged wife is found murdered in a hotel room rented under his name, beat cop Jack Forrest (Campbell) is arrested for the crime, along with a series of brutal murders that witnesses have claimed were committed by a police officer.  The only ones who believe Forrest to be innocent are his lover, vice officer Theresa Malloy (Landon) and hard-drinking, depressed Detective McCrae (Atkins).  Doing some off-the-books investigating, McCrae discovers that the real killer is Matt Cordell, a hero cop who was set up and sent to prison by the NYPD Commissioner (Roundtree) and a shady Captain (Smith).  Severely disfigured and brain-damaged during an attack by inmates, Cordell has escaped and is looking for revenge, but his damaged mind has him unable to distinguish ordinary, law-abiding citizens from those he wishes to punish.  When Cordell assaults the precinct in which Forrest is being held, McCrae is thrown to his death and Forrest and Malloy must go on the run, hoping to stop Cordell before their fellow officers catch them.  The whole thing concludes during a slam-bang chase set during the NYPD's St Patrick's Day Parade, which leads to a dock showdown.

This is a GREAT 80's action/horror film, with only some inconsistencies in Cohen's script (Why, exactly, did the higher-ups conspire to send Cordell to prison?  And why does brain damage make him invulnerable?) keeping it from being a genuine classic.  Look for director Sam Raimi (the Evil Dead and Spider-Man trilogies) as a parade performer.  Followed by the (even better) Maniac Cop 2 and the (regrettable) Maniac Cop 3.  As an aside, I got to sit next to Atkins for an entire weekend while manning a booth at Crypticon last year; he's a genuinely nice guy with a lot of great stories!