Maniac Cop (1988)
A killer dressed in police uniform begins murdering innocent people on the streets of New York City.
You have the right to remain silent… forever!
Personnel
Director
- William Lustig
Starring
- Tom Atkins
- Bruce Campbell
- Robert Z’Dar
- Laurene Landon
- Richard Roundtree
- William Smith
- cameo from Sam Raimi
Info
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniac_Cop
- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095583/
- https://www.justwatch.com/mx/pelicula/maniac-cop (adjust for your location)
Trailer
Full movie
(Warning: there’s a licensed copy available on YouTube, 1hr 19min, but it screws up the ending, cutting most of it. It was only after running into that problem that I finally remembered it was on Fawesome, complete at 1hr 25min.)
I’m pretty sure I saw this in the 90s. I remembered it a lot more “exploitationy” but seeing it now it was more like a fairly competent TV movie. Maybe the sequels are trashier and I’m confusing the original with the sequels. (For example, I could have sworn I remember seeing Robert Z’Dar in Hell Comes to Frogtown, but it turns out he’s only in Return to Frogtown which I didn’t even realize existed.)
Jack is outrageously funny, irreverent, and a bit too adult for broadcast TV at the time.
Just like Brisco County, he was just a little early. A couple years later when the dedicated cable channels hit their stride he would’ve been very successful (FX, SciFi, etc).
I bought the Jack DVD’s, they were like $20 - totally worth it.
Bruce is in Maniac Cop, but he doesn’t get the chance to be very “Campbellesque” ;)
I’ve still never got round to watching Jack of All Trades, although back in the day I did catch some episodes of its “stablemate” Cleopatra 2525.
I did finally see Brisco a few years ago, such a shame it was cut short. Apparently it was during a moral panic about violence on TV, and the campaign group picked an episode of Brisco featuring a boxing match, and they counted every single punch as another incidence of violence, giving a total that made it seem like it was a Blumhouse slasher.