Maniac (1980)
Directed by William Lustig
Starring Joe Spinell
88 mins; R18+; Colour

Previewed Release: R1 Anchor Bay
Tagline: I warned you not to go out tonight!
Country of Origin: USA

The Film:

Argue as much as you want, but the seventies and eighties was the golden age for horror. Sure, the sixties, nineties and noughties have seen some classics (Psycho, Peeping Tom, Night of the Living Dead and, on the other side of the spectrum, Saw and The Descent, to name a few), no other decades would have the sheer quality of output than the seventies and eighties: Halloween, Dawn of the Dead, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Evil Dead, The Hills Have Eyes, Last House on the Left, Friday the 13th, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre... and the list goes on. A film that gets lost in discussion of this era is Maniac, one of the most accomplished exploitation films of all time.

Co-scripted by Joe Spinell and directed by William Lustig, who surprisingly fell into obscurity, Maniac is a horror film like no other. No virile teenagers, no mysterious psycho and no let-up. From the moment we are introduced to the overweight, sweaty Frank Zito (Spinell), our titular maniac, the film descents into claustrophobia. Roaming the streets of New York when night falls, Zito kills young men and women (mostly women) randomly in order to vent his rage at being abused by his mother at a young age. He scalps his victims, nailing their hair to a mannequin and pretending they're dear old mum. But when he meets a photographer, Zito may finally have someone he can totally possess and call mum.

The Release:

The previewed release was the US Anchor Bay edition of the film, and special-features wise, it's excellent. We have a commentary, radio and TV spots, trailers and a 50 minute doco on Joe Spinell. But the best thing is by far the gallery of outrage, snippets from newspapers and magazines where critics tell how putrid and disgusting the film is. Classic.

The Bottom Line:

A number of aspects makes Maniac one of the horror genre's highlights, probably the most significant being the sheer depravity of the flick. There is no let-up and the violence is, on the whole, pretty putrid. Kudos also to Tom Savini, whose spectacular special effects are some of the best seen in the horror genre - the shotgun blast to the head is, in my opinion, the best gore effect in the history of cinema. Spinell acts well, a surprising bonus for a horror film, and Lustig directs with flair, though still maintaining the gritty atmosphere of sleazy New York City. A brilliant film, and one which should be in every DVD collection.


The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
Directed by Wes Craven
Starring Susan Lanier
89 mins; R18+; Colour

Previewed Release: Thorn-Emi Australian VHS
Tagline: The lucky ones died first.
Country of Origin: USA

The Film:

There's no doubt that Wes Craven is one of horror's luminaries and he is credited for beginning the rape-and-revenge cycle with Last House on the Left, creating a genre icon in A Nightmare on Elm Street and making a much-anticipated comedic comeback with Scream. Until its 2005 remake, The Hills Have Eyes was a highly underrated part of Craven's filmography and, while it is not his most accomplished film, it has influenced the horror genre in a multitude of ways.

Like Craven's earlier film Last House, Hills is essentially about a group of all-Americans pitted against their savage counterparts. But instead of two hippy chicks, we get an all-out extended family, the Carters - Big Bob and Ethel, their teenage children Brenda and Bobby, their adult daughter Lynne and her husband Doug, and the latter two's infant. Big Bob lives up to his name and what he says goes - if he wants to deviate from their Los Angeles destination and go for a trip into the desert, that's what they'll do. Of course, the inevitable happens - their RV jackknifes on the dusty, corrugated road, leaving them stranded. But in the mountains lives a family of savages and, when night falls, they launch a debilitating attack on the family, leaving some dead and others left to avenge their loved ones' murder at daybreak.

The Release:

The previewed release was the Thorn-Emi cassette, so very obviously you can do much better. If you want quality, Umbrella released a two-disc DVD with the bells and whistles.

The Bottom Line:

While The Hills Have Eyes is not a prime example of classic seventies horror, it remains a pivotal film within the genre, inspiring sequels (both official and unofficial), a rash of survivalist horror flicks such as Wrong Turn and a recent remake. At its heart, Hills is a B-movie, which automatically makes it a niche film - shoddy cinematography, poor acting and corny dialogue has maximum appeal with beer and a box of pizza. That's not to say Hills is bad, merely a film that wasn't aimed to appease the majority of horror cinemagoers. Not quite violent enough to be an exploitation film and not scary enough to be a decent horror outing, Hills is forever stuck in limbo. Among its most redeeming features, however, is an unsettling eerieness - there is little forewarning for the trailer attack, but the amount of tension is gruelling. It's clear Craven knows what he's doing, and by A Nightmare on Elm Street he has truly honed his craft. Worth watching for any horror fan.

Bad Taste (1987) Directed by Peter Jackson

Starring Terry Potter, Pete O'Herne

91 mins; R18+; Colour

Previewed Release: R4 Universal DVD

Tagline: One thing the aliens didn't count on was Derek, and Derek's don't run...

Country of Origin: New Zealand

The Film:

Peter Jackson's blood and viscera soaked debut is a cult classic across the globe and is technically inept and amateur in performance, not to mention a film that could be said to fully live up to its title. However, it is a classic underdog film - in fifteen years, Jackson went from this to Oscar glory.

Bad Taste surrounds a group of covert government agents investigating an alien invasion in a New Zealand country town Kaiharo. The aliens take on a humanoid form, doubtlessly a way of limiting the time and money spent on extravagant special effects (the aliens only appear in extraterrestrial form at the end). In the first few minutes, one of the agents shoots an alien in the head in a spectacular show of why the Magnum is the most powerful handgun in the world while another (the hilariously dopey Derek, played by Jackson) is on a cliff top with a captured alien who he proceeds to torture with a hammer and machete. When aliens get the better of him and he falls of the cliff, Derek finds his brains (and I mean that in a literal sense) and, with his compatriots, begin a full-scale attack on the aliens. As the plot unfolds, so too does the intention of the aliens - to turn the occupants of Kaihoro into hamburger meat for an intergalactic fast food chain.

The Release:

Very good, actually. A very interesting doco called Good Taste Made Bad Taste, with Jackson showing how he actually created those awesome gore effects. The disc also has interviews, a commentary, slide show and trailers. Far better than the 'limited edition' Anchor Bay edition.

The Bottom Line:

Essentially, Bad Taste is a gore movie and there are some incredibly hilarious effects - graphic shootings, stabbings, implementors, decapitations and disembowlments are showcased in spectacular form. It's graphic, to be sure, but the realism (or lack thereof) and humour permeated in each and every scene lessens its impact. While not as gory (nor as comic) as Jackson's 1992 horror opus Braindead, this is nevertheless highly entertaining and, like other early schlock horror masterpieces such as Herschell Gordon Lewis' The Gore Gore Girls and Raimi's The Evil Dead, it displays some great style. Bad Taste was shot on a $25 000 budget and even then it looks good: and the job Jackson did with $270 million with Lord of the Rings. Highly recommended.