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| Robert Z'Dar in Maniac Cop |
Cast: Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell, Laurene Landon, Richard Roundtree, William Smith, Robert Z'Dar, Sheree North, Nina Arvesen, Nick Barbaro, Lou Bonacki, Barry Brenner, Victoria Catlin. Screenplay: Larry Cohen. Cinematography: James Lemmo, Vincent J. Rabe. Production design: Jonathan R. Hodges. Film editing: David Kern. Music: Jay Chattaway.
Whoever did the closed captions for William Lustig's Maniac Cop deserves special credit for recognizing the movie's essence. Instead of the usual description of background noises, like "swooshing sounds" or "loud explosion," they inserted the equivalent of comic book words like "POW!" and "WHAM!" So when a van takes a nose-dive into the waters of the bay, instead of "gurgling sounds" as it sinks, we get "*BLUB* *BLUB*." In short, Maniac Cop is schlock, but knows it, as you might expect that when you see that the cast includes Bruce Campbell, who made his name by teaming up with director Sam Raimi on such campy horror movies as The Evil Dead (1981) and Army of Darkness (1992). (Raimi has a cameo in Maniac Cop as a TV reporter.) Lustig's movie is less outrageously over the top than the Raimi films, and there's a good deal of sub-par dialogue and acting, but it spawned two sequels.
