Maniac Cop 2 (1990)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Jeff "

  
  Sequel to the awesome Maniac Cop, Maniac Cop 2 is one awesome ride. Not as great as the original, this still manages to deliver awesome Horror thrills mixed with loads of low budget action. For me, the films in this series are by far the best B movie films ever made in the horror… More
  Sequel to the awesome Maniac Cop, Maniac Cop 2 is one awesome ride. Not as great as the original, this still manages to deliver awesome Horror thrills mixed with loads of low budget action. For me, the films in this series are by far the best B movie films ever made in the horror genre. They are loads of fun, despite being sleazy and feeling cheap at times. However the filmmakers obviously knew how to pull out something very good despite the fact that the film feels low budgeted. But who cares, right? All the best and greatest horror films of the late 70's and 80's were low budget films. Maniac Cop is just another example of a low budget classic. In this sequel, we get a bit more action than the first and Larry Cohen's script offers just the right amount of both elements(action and horror) to please the audience. In one scene, theres almost an homage to the first Terminator film as the Maniac Cop commits a massacre in a police precinct. The cast here are good Robert Davi is probably the best known actor in the film as he played in Licence To Kill and Die Hard. Robert Davi plays a tough cop on Matt Cordell's trail who is played Robert Z'dar. William Lustig's direction is again, impressive and he manages to get the most out of the actors and achieve a film with lots of action and horror. Matt Cordell is a very unique villain as he helps the criminals and not the victims, he kills the victims and Z'dar plays that character with phenomenal chilling perfection. All in all, not as great as the original, but still awesome in it's own right, and as far as sequels go, Maniac Cop 2 is a terrific follow up to a neglected classic of the horror genre. Maniac Cop 2 is one of the best horror sequels that I have ever seen, violent, horrifying and action packed, this will definitely appeal to fans of the first.

• Anthony L

  
  Killing off the main characters from the first film was a mistake. Robert Davi was good but not enough to save the film!

• Dean M

  
  The sequel is better than the original, it's still pretty much par for the course in the horror-movie sequel stakes. This time the officers who refuse to believe that Office Matthew Cordell died at the end of the first film are vindicated as he goes on the rampage again.

• Darik H

  
  Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The Empire Strikes Back. The Godfather, Part II. Each of these films is a member of an elite brotherhood of movie sequels, films that stood head-and-shoulders above their predecessors to become classics in their own right. There are few franchises that can… More
  Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The Empire Strikes Back. The Godfather, Part II. Each of these films is a member of an elite brotherhood of movie sequels, films that stood head-and-shoulders above their predecessors to become classics in their own right. There are few franchises that can claim a sequel that outdoes the original in every single way; and in their hallowed ranks, only ONE film series can make such a boast about a <i>direct-to-video release</i>. This is history. This is legend. This is Maniac Cop 2. Written and directed once again by William Lustig, Maniac Cop 2 is the best action-horror film you've probably never heard of. Full of elaborate stunt sequences, superb early-nineties make-up effects, and just a dollop of gratuitous nudity, this film is a significant improvement over the first movie in every major category-- it's creepier, it's more exciting, and the plot progresses naturally from the first film while taking the situation to the next level. Why Maniac Cop 2 was relegated to home video is beyond me; the film's production quality (including cinematography that doesn't look like a holdover from the seventies) is certainly up to snuff for the kind of stuff that was in the multiplex at the time. But alas, the movie only received a direct-to-video release, and even now it's tough to find a good copy on DVD (every release is in full frame, but I don't think it was actually shot that way). Despite that, it's developed a small but dedicated cult following, and with good reason: this movie has every staple of a classic cult genre movie, from chainsaws to car chases to Bruce-freaking-Campbell himself (unfortunately, the movie's biggest misstep is that it kills off Bruce's character <i>in the first ten minutes</i>). And to top it all off, Maniac Cop 2 does the franchise a serious favor by turning its villain, Matt Cordell, into a misunderstood, even sympathetic monster out for revenge-- one that looks <i>way</i> better than he did before, as actor Robert Z'Dar now sports an iconic make-up that aesthetically puts the character in the same league as Freddy or Jason. The film starts the way most 80s-era sequels do: with a recap of the climax of the previous film, in which Officers Jack Forrest and Teresa Mallory confronted Matt Cordell on the docks, culminating in him driving a police van off the pier and into the water. Neither Forrest nor Mallory believe that Cordell is actually dead, but the department wants to keep a lid on their story to save face, and ignore their warnings. Sure enough, they're right; Cordell tracks both of them down and kills them off within the first twenty minutes, leaving us with two new leads: Detective Sean McKinney, a loner cop with a disdain for authority and a pet peeve about psychologists, and Susan Riley, a police psychologist who was counseling Mallory, and who sees firsthand the kind of damage that Cordell can do. (more to come)

• Eduardo C

  
  Some impressive stunts (including an absolutely jaw-dropping one), decent performances and the overall seediness of the atmosphere almost make up for the shlocky, disjointed, repetitive, nonesensical screenplay and the uneven direction.

• Christopher B

  
  Pretty damned cool film, though I was unhappy with Campbell's fate. Still, the film won me over afterwards with it's sleazy characters and good ole violence.

• Chosen 7

  
  Stumbled across it one night, it was entertaining at the time.

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