abeales Reviews

Maniac (1980)

How low can you go?

[11 December 2000]

I can't say that "Maniac" isn't an interesting movie. It presents itself as an "exploration of the mind of a madman" in much the same way that the 1934 "Maniac" did and with about as much candor (which is to say none at all). "Maniac" is undeniably a classic of its type: an early-80's slasher/splatter movie stripped down to its absolute essence. It's probably the purest, the cruellest and the most corrupt example of the genre ever to exist on film. In fact, it exaggerates the cliches and easy criticisms of the genre to such an outrageous extent that it often seems more like a straw-man set up to deconstruct the mechanics of slasher movies than an example of the real thing. But don't be fooled. Although "Maniac" pretends to assume a sort of artistic gravity and a seriousness of intent, it's a Hershell Gordon Lewis movie at heart.

The film itself consists of almost nothing more than a prolonged series of suspense-building set-ups, each of which climaxes in a beautifully executed and lovingly presented piece of state-of-the-art special makeup gore. The special effects makeup, by George Romero regular Tom Savini, is truly spectacular. A scalping presented early in the film and a shotgun blast to the head presented later are especially memorable. Tom is even allowed a small part in the film, which culminates in probably the finest "exploding-head" effect ever presented on film (for the special makeup fan, it is truly gratifying to see this master craftsman allowed to "execute" himself in such a fitting manner). More than anything else, it is the gore which has earned the film what little fame (or infamy) it can be said to possess.

All that said, Maniac remains an extremely troubling film. Many of the comments posted here mention its "cheapness", a description based largely, I suspect, on the poor treatment the film has usually received in it's home video presentations. But as made abundantly clear in its recent repackaging as a remastered, widescreen, "director's cut" fan item, Maniac is anfairly well-crafted film. Its pacing is deliberately austere, and it very effectively generates an atmosphere of grimy, claustrophobic tension. In its technical finesse and industrial chill, "Maniac" resembles a George Romero movie made by Brian DePalma. Each shot appears to have been carefully framed, and the cinematography is generally fine, occasionally even excellent. In many respects it's an accomplished piece of filmmaking, especially when measured against slasher/splatter exploitation movies as a genre. The harsh and grating soundtrack, which borrows heavily from the John Carpenter school of minimal synth arpeggios, is probably the film's weakest point technically, but only if you ignore the acting.

In the title role, writer/star Joe Spinell turns in an amazingly overblown and dull-witted depiction of a man at war with his own demons. (Don't get your hopes up, though. It's not even good for camp laffs.) The character wobbles back and forth between raving, drooling monsterhood, and everyday-joe-ness without justifying the transitions or making either state really credible. Many writers seem to argue for the validity of the central performance, and, measured against films like "Friday the 13th", "Maniac" may seem like a reasonable and nuanced portrait of mental instability. In any broader context, however, the performance is absolutely atrocious. Furthermore, the script insists that we accept the villain as a professional artist, rather than the janitor or plumber he in every resembles. The supporting parts are equally underdeveloped and wooden, drawing clear attention to the fact that character development is not of much interest to the filmmakers.

Joe's performance would be bad enough if the filmmakers didn't insist on placing him in the middle of almost every single shot. "Maniac" never strays outside the killer's view. There is no pursuit, no detection, no "good guys" at all. We (the audience) know the victims only as the killer knows them. They exist only as fodder for their own exquisitely rendered death scenes. Which gives the movie a certain purity and simplicity, but exacerbates a repulsive sort of audience dynamic. The killer is the only real identification point in the movie. We see much of the action in straight point-of-view. Which could be said to draw attention to the viewer's complicity with the spectacle, but this is clearly not the filmmaker's intent. Instead we are forced to INDENTIFY with the killer. We wait on the edge of our seats for the explosions of blood and agony just as he does.

Fundamentally, "Maniac" isn't really interested in much besides the depiction of violence and pain. Violence and pain appear not as mechanisms by which the audience can be manipulated, but as simple ends in themselves. "Maniac" is the purest expression of the dominant 80's "violence as pornography" horror film aesthetic. It delivers extremely strong levels of brutal violence early, to set up audience expectations, and continues to bring the gore throughout its running time. Its very capably handled suspense sequences are based not on the classic "will the bad thing happen?" tension, but on a more modern "how will the bad thing be presented?" tension. And that's all well and good. Grand guignol is a big part of the function of the contemporary horror film. As an audience, we know what's gonna happen, we just agonize over (and at the same time anticipate) the precise congruence of knife and girl that will finish the scene. What makes "Maniac" so dispicable is the black haze of cruelty and lust that rises off the whole thing. The film's basic misogyny and frustrated desire are so fundamental to its nature that it seems almost pointless to mention or criticize them.

It's this pitiless, leering quality that makes the movie so uncomfortable to watch or enjoy in any traditional sense. With many Italian Zombie/Cannibal films of the same era (most notably Ruggereo Deodato's "The House at the Edge of the Park" and "Cannibal Holocaust") it shares a quality of prurient moralism that is extremely queasy at heart. The film seems to glower down on the atrocities it presents with a sort of cold puritanism, but ultimately cannot conceal the glee and fetishized sexuality in it's gaze. What's more, it seems totally unaware that such issues might even be considered (unlike "Cannibal Holocaust" which exploits issues of viewer culpability for cheap effect).* "Maniac" is an extremely self-conscious movie that remains, somehow, utterly unaware of its own psychodynamics. An ugly, witless and nearly inhuman piece of work.

* For reference, see "Man Bites Dog", which exploits viewer culpability to great effect.

*** caveat ***

I admit that these criticisms will seem tediously familiar to anyone who has followed the progress of the horror film over the past thirty years. These are not new arguments and perhaps not interesting ones. Please keep in mind, though, that this review was written by someone who LOVES horror movies and gore flicks, but who f***ing loathes slasher movies and the depiction of suffering for "entertainment's" sake. Most horror fans probably wouldn't find "Maniac" as distasteful as I did. I'm not arguing that movies make people kill. I don't hate horror movies. I don't hate gore. I just hate this movie.

RoboCop (1987)

Paul Verhoeven Thinks You Suck

[16 November 2000]

I saw Robocop when it was theatrically released in 1997 (I was then 20 years old), and while I loved it, I was as conflicted about it then as I am now. Which is to say that I was very, very conflicted. Robocop is a reprehensible piece of work and it's also one of my favorite movies. The tension between loathing and adoration is probably what makes it memorable to me, more than the film's admittedly striking visual and intellectual content. Basically, Robocop is an ultra-vicious splatter movie dressed up as a dystopian science-fiction satire. It presents a relentlessly bleak, thuggish and superficial future world where capital controls society to such an extent as to resemble a form of economic fascism. The plot centers on the struggle between what remains of Murphy, a murdered police officer, part of whose brain has been used as material in the construction of the titular law-enforcement robot, and OCP, the giant, shadowy mega-corporation that has privatized the police department.

Paul Verhoeven (The 4th Man, Starship Troopers) directs from a script by Michael Miner and Edward Neumeier (Starship Troopers) with his customary technical skill and taste for brutally black comedy. In many ways Robobop is Verhoeven's ultimate statement on the toxic wasteland of American culture, his primary theme since abandoning his native Netherlands. He presents the viewer with a vision of a violent, stupid, media-saturated society, and berates viewers for their complicity with that society. This would not be so terribly unique a position take, but for one brilliant stroke on Verhoeven's part: he makes movies that present themselves, too, as extensions of the society he criticizes. Which is to say that all of his American movies have been explicitly `American movies' - autocritical devices that function as examples of that on which they purport to comment. They are cold, stupid, brutal affairs that express nothing so clearly as their loathing for any audience that might enjoy them. At the same time, they subtly or explicitly subvert their superficial grotesquerie by commenting on the social milieu in which they take place. Thus both Robocop and Starship Troopers not only resemble bad American television shows, they explicitly present themselves as bad American television shows, complete with advertisements and vacuous `news briefs.'

Robocop is especially ruthless with regard to its audience, subjecting viewers to a dizzying, non-stop assault of violent spectacle. It veers back and forth between amusingly arch comic-book violence and nauseatingly graphic brutality, pulling the audience in with the comfortable spectacle of well-executed action movie derring-do, and then punishing viewers for enjoying it by subjecting them to incredibly drawn-out and grisly scenes of torture and mutilation. On one level, Robocop obviously wants to comment on and criticize the senseless, inconsequential brutality of American action cinema, but to that end it luxuriates in it's critic's license by hyperextending it's own representations of violence to previously unimaginable extremes. Sitting through Robocop for the first time (especially, I imagine, in it's new, vastly bloodier "director's cut" edition) is a profoundly disturbing and desensitizing experience.

This is not necessarily a problem. Much of the 20th century's greatest art is profoundly disturbing, and Robocop never allows its violence to function as simpleminded "thrills". It humanizes the violence it seems to celebrate, reminding the audience at every turn that pain and terror are integrally linked to "action." To complicate matters, however, it intentionally undercuts it's own critique, constantly letting the audience off the hook by supplying a horrific joke or a swashbuckling uplift to deflate our revulsion when the horror becomes too much to bear.

Robocop wants to have it's cake and eat it too, criticizing the conventions of American action movies as an emblem of the vacant blackness at the center of the American soul, but also reveling in the undeniable joys of the action movie format for the sake of turning a buck at the box office. This is certainly a valid approach, and Verhoeven may be congratulated for eschewing a puritan didacticism in his critique. But as with Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, one is left with the suspicion that for all the intellectual dazzle and political posturing, there is something horribly manipulative and heartless about the sensibility at work behind the film. That the movie is not fundamentally the autocritical device it purports to be, but merely a nihilistic bellow of rage and disgust, a self-important tirade against an audience for which the filmmaker feels nothing but contempt. Even worse, I worry that deep down Robocop (like NBK) is nothing but cynical moneymaking ploy, dressed up in the sheep's clothing of subversive intent to blunt the edge of critical assault. You can't really bring yourself to fault Robocop for it's cynicism, ugliness, and cruelty, after all, because it pretends to be merely holding a mirror up to our American soul. And who could fault so noble an intent, even as we watch Verhoeven walk away, laughing, hand in hand with Joe Eszterhas (author of Verhoeven's Basic Instinct and Showgirls) and great big bag of nice, green money.