In the early 1980’s there were horror films being released nearly every week. As I have mentioned in previous posts, my college friends and I went to see almost all these films. We even formed a loosely defined group who regularly went together to see these films. This group was called the Bad Cinema Club. The name of the group doesn’t always reflect the quality of the films we were seeing. We were mainly dedicated to watching horror films and enough of them we were seeing were bad enough for us to take on this name. One of the films that turned out to be not so bad was called Maniac.
When we went to see Maniac, our group was ready to make fun of whatever we saw. During the opening credits, we noticed the name Joe Spinell popped up several times. He was not only the star but also credited for writing the screenplay and the story along with being an executive producer. His name was showing up in the credits so often, we joked that he did everything. When a credit came on screen that didn’t have his name, we would say “and Joe Spinell”. For years after this, Joe Spinell’s name became a joke for us. When a new movie came out that we were considering seeing, we would ask, “Did Joe Spinell have anything to do with it?” We got excited when we would see his name in the opening credits of any film. He had small parts in some of the greatest films of all time like the first two Godfather films, the first two Rocky films and Taxi Driver.
For all the joking that we did about Maniac, it turned out to be a pretty good movie. It was a slasher film told from the perspective of the killer. It also had good special effects created by Tom Savini, who was famous for his work on Friday the 13th and Dawn of the Dead. One of the best scenes is where Joe Spinell’s character runs and jumps on the hood of a car with a shotgun, shooting the driver whose head explodes. Joe Spinell is good at playing greasy, unattractive characters. His look and style fit this slimy, maniac character.