Character actor Joe Spinell (THE GODFATHER, ROCKY, TAXI DRIVER) wrote the story, co-produced and played the lead, and former porn director William Lustig made his genre film debut. MANIAC was made on a very low budget, it was shot on 16mm, but thanks to nasty exploitation marketing, the movie was a success.

    Spinell is psychopath Frank Zito, who murders women whom he then scalps so that he can nail their hair onto fashion store mannequins he keeps in his disgusting apartment. The wild-eyed Zito is sweating, panting and talking to himself.

    One day, he runs into a beautiful photographer, played by former Hammer and Bond babe Caroline Munro - and he falls in love! Because of this, everything goes to hell.

    The problem with MANIAC is that it isn't fun as a horror movie. It's neither exciting nor scary, or even funny. It is however very, very depressing. That's why relatively few horror fans actually like it.

    But! I've watched the movie a couple of times the last year or two, and I realize I'm appreciating it more and more. Not as a horror movie, but as a dark, very twisted drama, made by and starring some very talented people. Yes, there are a handful of very violent, gory scenes courtesy of Tom Savini, but MANIAC also has a slight arthouse feel to it.

    It's also interesting that Zito's shabby apartment is inspired by Bo Widerberg's classic Swedish cop thriller THE MAN ON THE ROOF (1976) and the place that movie's killer lives in.

    The two-disc DVD I have also contains a long, very good documentary on Spinell's career. Here we get to see people protesting outside a theatre where MANIAC is playing. They claim it's a movie that teaches people how to rape and murder women.

    It's quite obvious they haven't seen the movie... 

    Along with Buddy Giovinazzo (director of COMBAT SHOCK), Joe Spinell started working on MANIAC 2: MR. ROBBIE and they shot ten minutes worth of footage in 1989, but then Spinell passed away. He had cancer.