Maniac (1980)

Joe Spinell as a fudged-up murderer in New York City

“Psycho” started a subgenre of films about mentally messed up people who go on killing sprees. For instance, the ’70s brought us movies like “Haunts,” “The Toolbox Murders,” “The Driller Killer” and “Don’t Go in the House.” “Maniac” comes in the tradition of these flicks while adding bits from the Dirty Harry franchise, “Dawn of the Dead” and “The Warriors.”

It’s gritty in its depiction of the sometimes repugnant underbelly of the city, but IMHO focuses too much on the killer stalking his victims, particularly, the nurse in the subway and, later, the model in her apartment. These sequences are tedious, and I found my mind wandering. The 2012 remake with Elijah Wood in Spinell’s role transplants the events to Los Angeles and is way more creative with interesting psychological elaboration. It's also more hypnotic and you find yourself developing sympathy for the nutjob, unlike here.

Notables on the feminine front include Rita Montone (hooker), Caroline Munro (Anna) and Gail Lawrence (Rita)

It runs 1 hour, 27 minutes; and was shot in The Big Apple in the last three months of 1979 along with the first couple of weeks of January, 1980.

GRADE: C+/B-