Is there any better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than honoring the work of recently departed horror icon ROBERT Z'DAR by watching the exquisitely deranged MANIAC COP trilogy? The answer is nope. MANIAC COP and MANIAC COP 2 are generously offered by HULU below and luckily some unknown nice person has made part 3 available on good old YouTube as well! Rest in peace ROBERT! We miss you already.
Thank you Unk,
Believe it or don't' but Maniac Cop 2 ranks somewhere very high in my all time top ten. The first one is great too (Bruce Campbell! Tom Atkins!) but MC2 is just over the top everything anyone could want in a second rate slasher movie. Violence, gore, corruption and best of all a tragic hero/villain who you aren't sure if you're supposed to be rooting for or not. The third one, while flawed, has some good moments. Jackie Earle Haley steps in as the secondary villain and we get a cameo from Ted Raimi.
But the only thing that ever bothered me about this film series is both MC and MC2 have the exact same tagline. "You have the right to remain silent… FOREVER!" They didn't tweak it for the sequel, like "You'll have the right to remain silent…AGAIN!" or something.
I got to meet Robert Z'Dar a few years ago at the annual Chiller Theatre convention in NJ. He was in bad shape physically (legs or back were causing him to limp) but he was polite and kind. He even motioned toward an unfortunate looking horror convention geek (long hair, overweight, wiry beard, thick glasses) and made a face to me like "Get a load of THAT guy." Shame he never got to participate in that 4th Maniac Cop or cameo in the talked about reboot. RIP Matt Cordell