The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, March 1-7
Maniac (1980)
Directed by William Lustig
Two years ago, BAMcinématek programmed “The Vertigo Effect,” a series of films riffing on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece. Someone could do a sequel: call it “The Psycho Offspring.” Along with Brian De Palma’s Raising Cain (1992), Maniac would be a key film. You know the story: a deranged man (Joe Spinell) hearing voices brutally murders young women in New York City. He has mommy issues—the origin of his rampage.
Lustig’s first non-porno feature is also his best. Maniac shares an excess of blood and gore with other American horror films of this time. Yet it’s virtually unique in its pacing. It’s deliberate, it’s slow, and it’s uncomfortable. It has the nervous system of a Euro horror film. Let us not forget about Joe Spinell either—that troubled character actor who died too soon. The shape and size of a refrigerator, and with pockmarks on his face and stringy black thinning hair, he is the maniac, sensitive and psychotic, delicate and damaged. Tanner Tafelski (March 2, 9:30pm at the Alamo Drafthouse with Lustig in person)