Post by stefancrosscoe on Mar 4, 2017 13:42:46 GMT
"You have the right to remain silent... Forever!"
"To protect and Serve". A slogan that should make the citizens of New York city feel safe, whenever the boys in blue are near by.
But when a crazed lunatic decides to dress up as an officer of the law, only to go out at night and slaughter innocent people, it ends up putting the whole town into a complete chaos. And to make matters worse, two of NYPD's very own finest suddenly find themselves being the wrongly accused targets in a fierce witch hunt.
One of my favorite horror/action trilogies, the Maniac Cop series written by Larry Cohen and directed by Will Lustig/Joel Soisson combines a bit of Magnum Force (1973) along with the more usual slasher genre of the 80s, and it does work rather well.
All three films gather along an pretty damn impressive cast which features the likes of Tom Atkins, Robert Davi, Bruce Campbell, Laurene Landon, Richard Roundtree, Michael Lerner, Paula Trickey, Danny Trejo, Sam Raimi, Charles Napier, Paul Gleason, Robert Forster and of course Robert Z'Dar as officer Matt Cordell.
Of the three films, and while the first one is probably the best one, the second has always felt a bit too "rushed" for my part and I did not like how they treated the two main characters from the first one, but I was more than glad to see Robert Davi in one of his rare appearances as the hero, Sean McKinney. A wise cracking but street tough, no nonsense detective, that I felt did his best work in the third film, Badge of Silence, which is also my favorite of the series.