Growing up in the UK during the ‘video-nasty’ era of the 1980s meant I managed to see my share of demented and exploitative genre offerings. Amongst the mountain of dreck their really were a fair few gems that crawled under the skin and left their memorable mark. Once such effort was William Lustig’s MANIAC (which also recently featured a scene in our greatest gory deaths feature), a superb, gruesome thriller focusing on damaged individual Frank, whose pent-up anger from early childhood abuse in let loose during the night on the sleazy streets of New York. The film was written and headlined by the great Joe Spinell and a remake is just around the corner.
Directed by Franck Khalfoun, MANIAC will this time see Elijah Wood in the lead role of troubled Frank and while some of us here at THN caught the impressive film at FrightFest (read our thoughts here), the film isn’t set to hit the UK or US officially until early next year.
In the meantime, check out these new stills for the film co-starring Nora Arnezeder, Liane Balaban, America Olivo, Jan Broberg, Morgane Slemp, Sal Landi, Genevieve Alexandra and Sammi Rotibi. THE HILLS HAVE EYES and PIRANHA 3D director Alexandre Aja is producing and also co-wrote the screenplay alongside longtime collaborator Gregory Levasseur.
We’ve also added the disturbing trailer for those who may have missed it.
Source: Kinogallery
