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Maniac Cop 2
[Blu-ray 4K]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Blue Underground Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (1st February 2022). |
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The Film
 Framed for the murder of his wife and countless other deaths around the city, New York cop Jack Forrest (The Evil Dead's Bruce Campbell) is cleared of any wrongdoing along with his partner Teresa Malloy (Laurene Landon, of scripter Larry Cohen's The Ambulance) with whom he had been having an affair – although the body of the so-called "Maniac Cop" has not been recovered. The only thing keeping them from returning to active duty is their insistence that the assailant is Matt Cordell (Hellhole's Robert Z'dar), a cop who was set up by corrupt politicians and railroaded to Sing Sing where he was murdered by his fellow inmates. Commissioner Doyle (Talos the Mummy's Michael Lerner), on the other hand, would like to sweep this all under the rug with the killer being identified as simply a homicidal maniac with a beef against the police and insists that Forrest and Malloy see police psychiatrist Susan Riley (The Hidden's Claudia Christian) in hopes that she will disabuse them of that belief. When Forrest and Malloy are subsequently murdered in true slasher sequel fashion, Doyle tries to pass the incidents off as the actions of a copycat killer. Riley, however, has seen Cordell herself. When she is teamed up with investigating officer Sean McKinney (License to Kill's Robert Davi) on the search for a killer of strippers Turkell (Halloween II's Leo Rossi), they don't have to look that much farther for Cordell who takes his quest for vengeance right to the police station itself in a climactic hostage situation to expose those who were really behind his premature death. Returning director William Lustig and scripter Larry Cohen (Q: The Winged Serpent)'s sequel to their 1988 film, Maniac Cop 2 is an overall more mainstream thriller in the gritty eighties mold of rather than the remnants of the seventies grindhouse era that informed and inspired their earlier filmography. In spite of some slasher borrowings like killing the previous film's leads off earlier on, the exploitation gold of a killer of strippers is a subplot character and the few scenes of Cordell's undead vigilante taking out a few guilty criminals attempt to evoke the same kind of audience reaction as Robocop blasting away lowlifes (without the added thrill of him moving on to the corrupt and connected). While Davi and Christian are less interesting protagonists that those of the first film, the film does make up for it in terms of the overall slicker look and more ambitious and better-executed stunts and effects. The look alone shows how much more refined the work of Lustig and cinematographer James Lemmo had progressed Maniac to Vigilante to the previous Maniac Cop (Lemmo also shot Joe Giannone's Madman and Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45). The scoring of Jay Chattaway (Silver Bullet) has also become more "gentrified" from his earlier more Euro exploitation-influenced efforts for Lustig. The film was followed up by Maniac Cop 3 which veered so far away from the earlier films that even Lustig eventually walked off and the film was finished by Joel Soisson (who went on to produce and direct horror franchise films for Miramax's Dimension Pictures arm).
Video
Released on VHS and laserdisc by Live Home Video in 1991, Maniac Cop 2 bypassed DVD stateside, not getting a release in that format until Lustig put it out on his own Blue Underground label as a Blu-ray/DVD combo in 2013 which was brighter than the VHS master, teasing out more detail in the night scenes. Their 2021 4K revisit on UHD and Blu-ray reveals that the earlier HD master was indeed too bright, with the newer darker image revealing overall richer colors and healthier skintones (along with a sliver more information on the left side of the screen) more expertly balanced with Dolby Vision. The film looked strikingly slick on the earlier Blu-ray and the newer transfer is less of a revelation than an affirmation that the film looked mainstream enough to play at the same multiplexes as its Hollywood action fodder contemporaries like Sylvester Stallone's Cobra (which Lustig mentions inspired the reveal of Cordell in the convenience store sequence).
Audio
The 2013 Blu-ray had a DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 remix as well as the Dolby Digital 5.1 EX downmix while the original Dolby Stereo track was only presented in lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround. The 2021 release includes a Dolby Atmos remix and the Dolby Stereo mix in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 on the UHD copy but retains the lossless 7.1 and lossy 5.1 and 2.0 surround tracks on the Blu-ray (although the Blu-ray does indeed feature the new remaster and is not a repressing of the 2013 disc). As with Blue Underground's other Atmos remixes, this track goes the conservative route, give more spread to the score while it is hard to tell if some of the rear channel effects have been adjusted in height. The UHD and Blu-ray retain the multitude of subtitle options with English SDH, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. As with the earlier edition, Jay Chattaway's score is presented on an isolated track (in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0). The Blu-ray is also compatible with D-Box motion systems which Blue Underground first started using on their Blu-ray of The Final Countdown (also recently upgraded to UHD/Blu-ray combo).
Extras
There are no new extras, but the earlier edition was well-equipped. We get the audio commentary by director William Lustig, moderated by filmmaker Nicolas Winding-Refn, an avowed fan of the film whose proposed remake of the first film is still in development after all these years. The moderator perhaps a bit too effusive in his comments on the film which go mostly untempered by Lustig who requires little prompting. Winding-Refn is more interested in the "cult" actors like Campbell and Christian while Lustig points out the film's cast of character actors (including Lerner, Clarence Williams III, and Hank Garrett (whose he suggests is his Car 54, Where Are You? character thirty years later). Discussion tends to fall back on questions and comments about the budget (which was three times that of the first film), locations (some of the stunts and effects were shot in Los Angeles where they had better resources), as well as the shooting and editing style; but overall, it's an informative about not only the film but low-budget filmmaking during the period when direct-to-video was taking over domestic distribution (including the exasperating British producer). Also highly informative and more entertaining is the thorough "Back on the Beat: The Making of MANIAC COP 2" documentary (46:49). Lustig and Cohen begin by separately relating their recollections of the project's origins. According to Lustig, Cohen suggested he do a sequel to Maniac, while Cohen says Lustig just came to him with the tagline "You have the right to remain silent… forever!" Davi humorously recalls that Lustig pitched the film to him as being "Frankenstein meets The French Connection, and you're Gene Hackman" while Rossi discusses doing in-depth research for his role (Lustig clarifies the Turkell character as being the equivalent of Frankenstein's Igor). Christian is also on hand and alludes to not enjoying the shoot – Lustig says that her book goes into more detail and that the feeling is mutual – but she does like the resultant film. Z'dar recalls acting under the make-up while effects artist Dean Gates (Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead) discusses his prosthetic work (improved over the first film), and stunt coordinator Spiro Razatos talks about the fiery climax as well and cringes in retrospect at actually using the actors themselves in the stuntwork (mainly Christian in the runaway car scene) which Lustig attributes to his love of Jackie Chan and Chow Yun Fat films. Also revealed here is that the role of Commissioner Doyle was supposed to go to Richard Crenna, and that Rossi got Lerner – also present here briefly – for the part when Crenna had to drop out. Chattaway also appears to discuss the score, citing his collaborators and their contributions (including the ending rap song). Lustig also appears in a Cinefamily Q&A (28:35) at a 2012 screening of the film in which he waxes about the night shoots and substituting the New Jersey town of West New York (where the cops were cooperative because they were looking for extra Christmas money). He groans at the shots where Cordell is on fire where you can see the protective mask (the prompter defends the shots because you can actually see that it's an actor on fire rather than a CGI effect), and setting his arm on fire to show Rossi that the effect was safe to do. He states that Cohen's producer credit on the films was a trade-off for writing the script, but he now regrets it because of how much work he did as producer and director. He also addresses killing off the first film's main characters, Z'dar's dislike of the prosthetic make-up, and working with Cohen and Sam Raimi who were working, respectively, on The Ambulance and Darkman at the time. A single deleted scene titled "The Evening News with Sam Raimi" (1:31) features the filmmaker's cameo from a lesser quality source (he is still listed in the end credits of the finished film). No American trailer is included but the disc does feature an international trailer (1:42), the UK teaser (0:33), as well as French theatrical trailer (1:41) and German theatrical trailer (1:41) that are almost identical. A poster & still gallery is also included
Packaging
The combo's case comes housed in a slipcover.
Overall
You may "have the right to remain silent... FOREVER" but Maniac Cop 2 will turn up again and again with each new incarnation of physical media.
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