phanthinga The 80s is a wild time when literally everything or everyone can be a serial killer even a cop.Begin with Matt Cordell a super cop after being wrongly accused and sent to jail he come back as a unstoppable killing machine known as the Maniac Cop.On the path of revenge with blood of many innocence people the only hope left is two NYPD cop Frank McCrae played by Tom Atkins and Jack Forrest played by the man the legend himself Mr.Bruce Campbell.It a good fun horror movie that i enjoy a lot but there one things really bugging me that although Maniac Cop is very strong but he still a human so how the hell in one scene he getting shot multiple times but still alive.I guess the sequels will answer me that

Fella_shibby I saw this in the late 80s on a VHS. Revisited it recently after hearing about the remake in process. The plot - People are being murdered by a uniformed police officer. A young cop, finds himself under arrest as the suspect. Solid genre team comprising of director William Lustig (Maniac, Vigilante), screenwriter Larry Cohen (God told me to, Q) n actors Bruce Campbell n Tom Atkins. Basically it is a low budget slasher with an equally brutal n indestructible killer like Jason,  Freddy n Myers. The killer in this film is big built n strong. The kills r brutal. The wet cement kill was laughable though. The fact that the killer is indestructible is never really explained. Also there r scenes which makes no sense. The killer appears n disappears outta nowhere. The music is proper 80s. The dialogues n editing r bad. The 2nd n 3rd part were atrocious.

eskwarczynski This movie is absolutely bonkers - in the best sense of the word. We get Tom Atkins playing the cynical, un-trusting detective, a post Evil Dead II Bruce Campbell giving his best "leading man" performance, classic late 80's gore effects and a strange, pulsing synthesizer soundtrack.As much as I enjoyed Maniac Cop - and I did enjoy it - I certainly wouldn't defend this movie as being a great film or as some underrated art piece. While there is some great subtext about police brutality and the public's growing mistrust of authority figures, the movie isn't mature enough to really tackle these themes. Director William Lustig lacks the finesse and skill of George A. Romero - the undisputed master of political horror - which could have elevated this film to classic territory.In the end, the movie is what it is. A fun, vibrant, and occasionally clunky 80's slasher... and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's certainly worth a watch for any horror fan. There's a lot of fun moments and creative sequences.

tomgillespie2002 William Lustig's Maniac Cop plays like a B-movie fan's wet dream. It has Lustig - director of the wonderfully grim Maniac (1980) - at the helm, and Larry Cohen, legendary writer/director of such gems as It's Alive (1974), Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) and The Stuff (1985), on scriptwriting duties. In front of the camera it has Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell, William Smith, Richard Roundtree and Robert Z'Dar - all together in the same movie! I almost feel like I should complain that Michael Moriarty wasn't invited to join the cast. Due to the stellar talent involved, I feel like Maniac Cop is almost a let-down. Contrivances and bad writing can usually be forgiven in movies like this, but it's difficult not to expect that little bit more. Still, this doesn't stop the film from being a great deal of fun.When a man dressed as a police officer breaks the neck of a woman fleeing from rapists, investigating police lieutenant McCrae (Atkins) is told to keep eye-witness accounts of a cop committing the act hush-hush. This prompts McCrae to leak the information to a journalist, only for a media frenzy to cause the public to turn on genuine police officers trying to uphold the law. A woman suspects her husband Jack Forrest (Campbell) to be the killer, and when she is murdered moments after witnessing him in bed with another woman, Jack is arrested as the prime suspect. McCrae, however, believes Jack to be innocent and digs deeper into the story of a hero cop long believed to be dead.Too much just doesn't add up in Maniac Cop. Like Jason in the Friday the 13th franchise, the Maniac Cop has superhuman strength and a sense of invincibility. Where Jason can be chalked down to some sort of supernatural influence, no explanation is giving here, failing to fit in with the back-story provided for the killer. The scenes of police procedural - something Cohen is normally very accomplished at writing - are muddled, with Jack still being held even after McCrae and Jack's lover and fellow cop Theresa (Laurene Landon) are attacked by the Maniac Cop while Jack is held in custody, and any real female police officers will no doubt be offended to Theresa's wailing reaction while being threatened.I could carry on bashing the film, but I won't, as I actually had a pretty good time watching it. Like most movies with Cohen involved, Maniac Cop is very funny. Campbell is effortlessly hilarious, even in a relatively straight role, and the script is witty when it's not taking liberties with the plot. Lustig, who went on to direct two sequels, also provides some decently staged action scenes. The film is also surprisingly brutal in it's violence and gore, so gore- hounds will not doubt finish the film feeling satisfied. And it's due to these positives that I cannot be too harsh on Maniac Cop, as even though it's little more than a decent slasher flick, I certainly kept me entertained.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com