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Plot

Italian-American landlord Frank Zito was abused as a child by his prostitute mother Carmen, and as a result, becomes a serial killer who murders young women, scalps them and attaches their hair to mannequins. After he awakens from a nightmare about killing a couple on a beach, he dresses himself, revealing terrible scars on his torso, and leaves his apartment, heading towards Manhattan into Times Square. When Frank is randomly invited inside a hotel by a prostitute, she kisses him before he abruptly strangles and scalps her. He returns home, dresses a mannequin with the dead prostitute's clothing and nails her scalp to its head. Frank tells himself that beauty is a crime punishable by death.

Sometime later, he dresses again and takes a collection of weaponry with him, including a double-barrelled shotgun, before leaving. He drives around Brooklyn and the Queens area, where he finds a couple exiting a local disco and parking near the side of the Verrazzano Bridge. When the boyfriend starts up the vehicle after his date sees Frank spying on them, Frank kills the couple with his shotgun and then adds the woman to his mannequin collection. After seeing his recent crime on television, he talks to himself and the mannequins as he sobs himself to sleep.

During the next day in Central Park, Frank follows a photographer named Anna after she takes a photo of him and a little girl riding a bicycle in the distance. At night, Frank sees a nurse leaving the Roosevelt Hospital, where he then stalks her inside the subway station and murders her with a bayonet before adding her to his mannequin collection. Days later, Frank heads to Anna's apartment and is invited inside by Anna after she recognizes him from the photo she took of him. Upon him asking her out to dinner, he later shows her a photo of his mother who died in a car crash years ago. A few days later, Frank is invited by Anna to a studio during a photography session, and she introduces one of her models Rita to him. After seeing the two talking and holding hands, he steals Rita's necklace and leaves. Later that same night, he arrives at Rita's apartment to give her the necklace, before then attacking her and tying her to the bed. Frank begins talking and addresses her as his mother and stabs her with a switchblade before scalping her for his collection.

One night, Frank takes Anna on a date and they stop by a cemetery to visit his mother's grave. While laying some flowers beside the headstone, Frank begins to mourn over his mother as well as Rita and attacks Anna. He chases her around the cemetery, but she hits him in the arm with a shovel before fleeing. He hallucinates his decomposing mother attacking him from the grave. He runs back to his apartment, where he sees his mannequins suddenly coming alive. They mutilate Frank with his weapons before ultimately tearing off his head.

The next morning, two police officers break into Frank's apartment and see Frank lying dead on his bed, having committed suicide by stabbing himself. After the officers leave, Frank's eyes suddenly open, revealing he survived.

Casting

Because Maniac did not have the budget to secure a contract with SAG and the script was rejected, Lustig used a loophole to cast SAG actors, including Spinell, without exposing them to union penalties. Spinell wanted to play Frank Zito, and researched real-life serial killers such as Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Henry Lee Lucas, Ed Gein, and David Berkowitz to get into the role. He also saw a young child rocking by himself outside Lustig's apartment, which he incorporated into Frank's character, and came up with the idea that Frank would have scars from his abuse by his mother Carmen Zito. At one point during production, Spinell shaved his mustache and cut his hair to portray Lieutenant Munafo in Nighthawks. He wore a long-haired wig and fake mustache for the remaining scenes. Dario Argento's wife Daria Nicolodi was considered for the role of Anna D'Antoni, but was unavailable at the time since she was filming Inferno in Italy. Judd Hamilton provided the money to finish the film on the condition that his then-wife Caroline Munro be cast instead. Maniac was one of the three films that Spinell and Munro worked together; the other films being Starcrash and later The Last Horror Film. Munro's casting led to an increase in screentime for Anna, including particular scenes where she and Frank get to know each other and go on dates, which Lustig disliked. Several pornographic film actresses were hired to play Frank's victims and other minor female roles. Susan Tyrrell and Jason Miller were cast for the film, with Miller playing the cop from the film's original script, but they dropped out for unknown reasons.

Lustig played a hotel manager, during which Spinell kept trying to make him crack on camera by writing jokes on the check-in card. Frank Pesce provided the voice of a television reporter. Tom Savini and his real-life girlfriend Hyla Marrow made cameo appearances as the boyfriend and girlfriend killed by Frank. Louis Jawitz, who played Anna's art director, was actually a professional photographer who leased his studio to be used for one day to shoot the scene in which Frank visits Anna and three female models in the studio.

Filming

Principal photography began on October 21, 1979, and wrapped on January 18, 1980. The film was shot on location in New York City on a $48,000 budget in 26 days. Many scenes had to be filmed guerrilla-style because the production could not afford city permits. Lorenzo Marinelli was hired to edit the film. The opening scene on the beach was shot as a homage to Jaws. The exterior of the hotel in the scene where Frank is invited inside by a prostitute was filmed at the St. James Hotel, during which they were approached by police looking for a serial killer. Lustig stated that on the night after they were at the hotel, the crew read news that a woman had been decapitated there. Two other women had also been murdered in the Travel Inn Hotel in Times Square at the time, and police dressed up mannequins in the victims' clothes to identify them, similar to Frank dressing his mannequins with his victims' clothes and hair in the film.

Tom Savini was hired as the film's make-up artist while working on Friday the 13th, feeling upset that his work on the latter film was being cut. The sound effect for Frank ripping the prostitute's flesh when scalping her was created by twisting a leather wallet near a microphone. The scene where Frank murders the boyfriend (played by Savini) was filmed near the Verrazzano–Narrows Bridge in an hour, and loosely inspired by the "Son of Sam" murders committed by David Berkowitz, who shot people in parked cars with a .44 Special revolver. Savini received the role for the male victim from him having already made a cast of his own head, which was filled inside with leftover food, pig intestines, and fake blood. Since Savini used live ammunition for the scene, with the force of the blast making him fall off the car's hood, he immediately threw the shotgun into the trunk of a waiting car driven by Spinell's friend and assistant Luke Walter, to avoid being caught by the police. The part where Frank murders the female victim (played by Hyla Marrow) was filmed in a different location at a later date. The dummy was locked in the trunk of the car used in the scene. Because the car had begun to smell because of the pig intestines, it was then sunk to the bottom of the East River. The sound effect for the shotgun being fired was reused from Dawn of the Dead.

The scene with the helicopter POV shot was repurposed from an unused scene for Inferno. According to Lustig, Frank's apartment was designed by an unknown individual, who built an actual apartment with immovable walls and running water. Spinell and the designer furnished the apartment with props, dolls and mannequins. Savini also reused the headless corpse of Pamela Voorhees from Friday the 13th for the scene in which Frank is killed by his mannequins.

Critical reception

Upon its theatrical release, Maniac received numerous unfavorable reviews, with many critics lambasting the film for its depiction of violence. Gene Siskel did a TV piece for the CBS affiliate in New York City where he strongly criticized the use of TV kiosks that showed graphically violent and gory scenes from the film outside a theatre in Times Square; he later picked the movie as one of his "Dogs of the Week" on his show with Roger Ebert, stating that he walked out of the movie after 20 minutes because he felt it could not redeem itself at that point.

Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote: "Good sense, if not heaven, should protect anyone who thinks he likes horror films from wasting a price of admission on Maniac, a movie that shows how an aging, pot-bellied maniac slices up young women of no great intelligence".

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Maniac holds a 40% approval rating based on 20 critic reviews, with an average rating of 5.2/10.

Stuart Galbraith IV (DVD Talk) said of the film: "Despite some good direction and a sincere, even daring performance by character actor Joe Spinell (Rocky), who also co-produced and co-wrote its screenplay, Maniac (1980) is alternately repellent and boring, despite the obvious intelligence that went into its making. A low-budget slasher film notable for its extremely graphic splatter effects by Tom Savini - who also appears in the picture - Maniac is mostly a character study, anticipating the much superior (if no less unpleasant) Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)".

Tom Becker of DVD Verdict said "that the film is so effective is due in no small part to the performance of Joe Spinell as Frank, the schlubby-looking guy whose darkness overwhelms him. This is not the standard, amateurish, paint-by-numbers horror villain turn. Spinell creates a fully formed portrait of this monster that goes far beyond the surface. He mutters to himself, talks to mannequins, growls like an animal when stalking his prey—yet he can be charming as well, and while the pairing of Spinell and Munro as lovers has a definite Beauty and the Beast quality to it, it's not entirely unbelievable. Had Maniac been more of a mainstream film, Spinell might have been remembered as one of the great horror heavies".

The Hollywood Reporter cites the film as "something of a grubby touchstone among genre fans".

Film scholar John Kenneth Muir wrote that the film "positively oozes sleaze and despair, and that's a compliment...After watching Maniac, you'll want to take a deep breath, maybe even a shower, but you won't have wasted ninety minutes on something that has no meaning, no pulse, and no heart". Jim Harper, in his book Legacy of Blood: A Comprehensive Guide to Slasher Movies, praised Spinnell's performance, noting it as the "centerpiece" of the film.

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