Maniac Cop 2 (1990)

Formerly half-undead serial killer cop Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar) is back from his watery grave, now even more dead, and still so angry about being framed for crimes he didn’t commit by THEM and then being murdered in prison, he is still murdering basically everyone he meets. In fact, he seems to put little effort at all into seeking out the political higher ups responsible for his fate and only in the very end of the film gets around to kill off their pawns. As an undead seeker of vengeance, Cordell’s not terribly impressive. He’s great at killing random people, though.

Because he has so much time off, Cordell uses the film’s first act to kill off the heroes of the first Maniac Cop (bye, Bruce Campbell, so long, Laurene Landon!), leaving the audience to the tender mercies of whiny, self-righteous, hard-ass cop Sean McKinney (Robert Davi) and police psychologist Susan Riley (Claudia Christian) as our new protagonists. After the usual dance of scepticism and mutual dislike, these two team up to get Cordell off the street and clear his name. Because that’s important after the dozens of innocents the zombie cop has slaughtered.

Cordell doesn’t want to be left out of the partnering up business this time around, so he shacks up with serial killer of Times Square strippers Turkell (Leo Rossi, wearing some sort of hilarious alien hair mop creature on and over his head, looking for all the world like one of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers).

As sarcastic as I may sound above, I really had a hell of an entertaining time watching the second of the three Maniac Cop movies from the dynamic duo of that great New York writer/director/producer Larry Cohen (only writing and producing here), and that loveable, semi-great sleazebag William Lustig. The plot makes little sense – though you can see the vague shapes of the sense it is probably supposed to make – but every scene here is basically written to provide either some intensely goofy shit (the scenes of Turkell and Cordell showing each other their knives, and Landon’s short chainsaw fight against Cordell stand as obvious examples), provide Lustig with opportunity to wallow in by 1990 old-school New York sleaze, or win the audience’s hearts with insane stunts and absurd violence.

As such, the film is a raving success. The goofy shit is indeed goofy as heck, New York has seldom looked more like some sort of crazy nightmare built out of trash and human desperation, and the action scenes are insane and gritty in idea and execution. Because Cohen and Lustig know and love actors, the film also contains a ream of fun performances. Even the in theory utterly unlikeable McKinney becomes great entertainment in the hands of Davi who is after all one of the guys who wrote the book on playing these types of characters in low budget films, and Christian pretty much wins my heart by playing her character absolutely straight even though she’s moving through a world made out of absurd nonsense.

Adding even more value to the whole proposition is Cohen’s patented dialogue that sounds sharp and fun (and often funny) in a way which tempts one to talk of realism; in truth nobody does talk like a character written by Larry Cohen, of course. It’s rather that one feels this version of New York should be populated by people talking this way, so there’s a feeling of veracity to the dialogue. Which beats boring realism any day.


Indeed, all of this adds up so well I hands-down prefer Maniac Cop 2 to the first one by a mile or two, and that even though it uses one of my least favourite horror movie tropes by killing the first film’s heroes off in the first act. But then, Davi/Christian are much more entertaining than the original pair (sorry, Mr Campbell), and the rest of the film clearly sets out to outdo the first one in everything, from grime to explosions, and succeeds wonderfully.

Past Misdeeds: Arena (1989)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


In the future, an intergalactic, inter-species fighting championship is held in a shoddy looking space station. Since the contestants are kept on the same physical level (except for things like size and number of limbs which won't ever be important in a fight, no sir) by magicalscientific handicap beams, a level playing field should be guaranteed for all. In truth, the championship is in the hands of evil Rogor (Marc Alaimo for a change being the evil boss instead of the evil boss's first henchman) who cheats, lies and sucks the sportsmanship out of the sports wherever he can. Under these circumstances it comes as no surprise Rogor's rude fighter Horn (Michael Deak) is the Champion of the Universe right now, and there's no chance for the only honest trainer in the universe, Quinn (Claudia Christian), to ever lead one of her fighter to the title.

That is, until a series of complicated circumstances including a punch-up in a Space McDonald's, an illegal space gambling den and the human's four-armed buddy Shorty (Hamilton Camp doing his best Ernest Borgnine) turns Earthling Steve Armstrong (Paul Satterfield in the beginning stages of anime hair) into her main fighter. Steve is not just as pure-hearted as Quinn, but also, as it turns out, the fighter who will once and for all lay the space sports rumour to rest that humans can't fight. Even if he has to survive sex with and a poisoning attempt by Rogor's (space, one supposes) girlfriend and (definitely) space singer Jade (Shari Shattuck), and other evil plans of Rogor and his assistant Weezil (Armin Shimerman) to get and win his title fight.

People who know me won't be at all surprised to hear that one of the few movie genres that doesn't do anything at all for me is the sports film. Turns out I don't care who can throw the ball hardest or kick his opponent in the reproductive organs the most subtly, and find the whole ideological shtick of these films rather unpleasant. Hell, I usually don't even enjoy tournament martial arts films, unless they feature a yogi with retractable arms.

But put the sports film onto a space station and make most of the fighters cute little alien freaks, and I get all excited. It seems as if the best method to convince me the general silliness of sports movies is fun lies in transporting them into even more silly space opera SF surroundings. And who am I to complain about it, seeing as I get a very fun time out of it, at least in Arena's case?

One of the best features of Arena is how serious it takes its own silliness, with nary a moment going by where the film isn't decisively not winking at its audience, even if winking would be the most natural thing to do given the circumstances. However, delivering the weird and the silly with a straight face is often the best technique to make it fun to a viewer instead of just annoying. One doesn't, after all, go into a movie to witness how much the filmmakers look down on their own work (and implicitly the audience paying to see it). Here, the knowledge of the silliness of the film's basics is taken as self-evident but not as a reason to half-ass anything.

In fact, half-assing is quite the opposite of Arena's way of going about things. Instead, director Peter Manoogian (also responsible for the awe-inspiring Eliminators), working for Charles Band when Charles Band was still doing his best to be Roger Corman and not a puppeteer, scriptwriters Danny Bilson (also responsible for a few other fine bits of fun low budget movie writing before he became a videogame company suit) and Paul De Meo (Bilson's long-time writing partner), and the usual Empire Pictures gang do one hell of a job of piling weird, interesting and often funny detail upon weird, interesting, and often funny detail. There might not have been much money going around, but what these guys had, they put visibly on screen in form of a surprising number of different aliens with actually different body types (no Star Trek "facial lumps only” aliens here), sets that may depend on the audience's goodwill yet are also built with love and effort, haircut and make-up crimes that make for a distinctly 80s kind of future, and more sight-gags than anyone could notice in a single session with the film.

Arena is the sort of movie that goes so out of its way when it comes to creating its world (even if its is a very silly world), it even features two pretty alien musical numbers for its not-all-that-alien singer Jade where most films would have contented themselves with a mock swing number with synthies instead of horns. The film isn't creating a believable future (not that it's out to do that), but it sure builds a place out of cheap sets, concepts and ideas plundered from Hollywood films of the 30s to 50s, pulp SF, and energetic enthusiasm.


That the few fights the film contains aren't all that great to watch (it seems Steve's fighting prowess consists in his ability to actually move faster than a snail) isn't much of a problem in this context, for who cares about the quality of the fights when everything else that happens on screen is so fun to look at?

Accidental TV Movie Week: Strays (1991)

Accidental TV Movie Week is what happens when I read the excellent “Are You in the House Alone?” edited by blogger and podcaster Amanda Reyes and spend a week only watching the sort of US TV movie treated in the book. Don’t be afraid.

Even if your own sister is the real estate agent, the price of a house can still be too low. I don’t exactly know that Claire Lederer (Claudia Christian) doesn’t tell her sister Lindsey (Kathleen Quinlan) and her husband Paul Jarrett (Timothy Busfield) – who is also Claire’s divorce attorney – that the last owner of their new house out in the boons was an elderly cat lady who may or may not have been eaten by her cats after a particularly evil example pushed her down the cellar stairs, but I have my doubts. Anyway, the Jarretts and their tiny little daughter Tessa (Heather and Jessica Lilly) move in and are soon assailed by cat troubles. Now, you’d usually think that outrunning and outdriving a bunch of kittens shouldn’t be too difficult, but Shaun Cassidy’s script finds various contrived methods to keep the neighbourless place in the woods even more isolated – how about a phone repair person the alpha cat murders early on by, umm, I’m not sure, to be honest, and who will rot away in the Jarretts’ cellar for the next day without anyone noticing, and a tow truck tugging away the wrong car?

Apart from the poor working class guy, the cats mostly begin their campaign of terror by looking adorable, pissing on hubby’s wardrobe and attacking the family pooch, but after a little time, they do go on what goes for an all-out attack in a cat attack movie.

Let’s be honest here: horror films in which house cats are the main threat to people just don’t work. One of the reasons for this is the simple fact that about ninety-five percent of humanity could beat their house cat in a fightt, and we know it. Perhaps we’d end up a scratched up, and with a couple of bites that could potentially murder us via bacterial infection later on, but unless the cat is a cattician (or has the special abilities of the one in Tales from the Darkside), simple weight and size differences and the pesky laws of physics give our mewing friends bad chances at hunting us down. For a movie, with John McPherson’s made for the USA Network’s Strays certainly no exception, there’s not just plausibility and physics to conquer, but also the by now well-known fact that cats are not terribly cooperative actors. In Strays’ case, the evil alpha cat does act surprisingly cranky throughout, with its bad mood further enhanced by some bastard in the make-up department having mussed up its hair, but the kitty minions are mostly your typical horror movie evil cats, showing little to no aggressive body language, seldom getting up to anything better than looking adorable and pawing playfully at the camera. Unless the viewer is an ailurophobe, there’s really little to find threatening here.

The film’s not exactly helped by a script that not only suffers from too contrived attempts to isolate the characters and other moments that strain credibility a bit too far (would a mother really leave a child this young behind during a major cat attack like our heroine does?), but also includes an absolutely pointless subplot about Lindsey fearing Paul and Claire are stumbling into an affair, something that has no function in the plot nor any thematic import. The latter because there is no theme, apart from kittens being adorable. I’m also not sure why the film has three endings.


McPherson does try his best with what he is given. At least one of the cats is sort of threatening after all, the cast is perfectly decent (and would probably be actively good if there’d be only something to do for them), and at least the location and sets he has to work with are actually fit for their purpose. So he does what any decent director would do and aims for very traditional suspense beats, and ends on a mini siege (by kittens!) for his climax which takes place during a very atmospheric rain storm. He doesn’t exactly save the mostly dreadful script but certainly manages to turn it into a film that’s more watchable than not, even if it is as stupid as the day is long and features a highly adorable threat. Plus, the film is full of cute little kittens!

On WTF: Arena (1989)

Sports movies are kind of boring, aren't they?

But what a about a sports movie taking place in true space opera outer space, about an Earthling proving once and for all that humans are the best when it comes to physical violence?

That's a question this week's column on WTF-Film and Arena are going to answer.

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