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It’s not for lack of trying, at least for the first two thirds or so. If you do a little legwork on Maniac Cop, those of you who are into documentary filmmaking will recognize director William Lustig, while the other 99.9% of you won’t. You’ll get your hopes up when you see writer Larry Cohen’s name and then you’ll realize that no, he’s not one of THOSE Cohens. Still, the two of them put together a surprisingly entertaining thriller that also has an awesome title. But they built it on shaky ground. It's not that I was expecting Silence of the Lambs from this; quite the opposite. I'd never seen Maniac Cop before, and was just looking forward to the kind of movie that requires a few glasses of scotch to make any damn sense. Instead, I got better than expected overall production values, not the worst acting (but definitely some of the worst dialogue) I've ever experienced, not to mention some fairly effective camera work. I don't know what kind of documentaries Lustig makes, but they've given him an above average eye for horror.

And best of all, there is a cop who is indeed a maniac - exactly as advertised.

No, the reasons why Maniac Cop is about to lose two of those stars is because parts of it are indifferently made. Tom Atkins seems to approach his role seriously and as long as he's not in the room with Shaft (nothing impressive about Roundtree here), you'll start thinking Maniac Cop might be a serious thriller. In fact, once Campbell's character gets involved things are starting to feel like a soft, but fairly solid basic cable potboiler. So it's not Atkins' fault, but the minute detective McCrae gets his hooks into this case, things start going off the rails, a little at a time. I know it's hard to write about police work when you don't know anything about police work, but seriously? McCrae comes to all of his conclusions by just randomly - and correctly - guessing one thing after the other about the Maniac.

I'm not kidding. He just decides he knows things, and they turn out to be right. The story gives you no indication whatsoever as to where he obtained any of this information. I assume he was the first one to read the script or something. He almost literally trips over clues at times, but there's no irony about it - someone just didn't give a shit whether anything made any sense or not. I know it sounds like a small thing, but wait until you see it in action. It's baffling, and it takes you out of the story. And then there's the trouble Maniac Cop has with time. One of the most completely inept car chases you'll see if you live to be 200 is in this film, and it goes on for so long that you'll start to think maybe it's a joke. One shot it's night, the next one it's day...but not story time has passed for that to be true.

These are small, but distracting and amateurish things, even for a movie called Maniac Cop. But the net result is still a film that's way, way better than I had any right to expect. It goes completely bananas in the last act, like something that doesn't want to live anymore and couldn’t care less about consequences. Several things about the Maniac - including the reasons behind his rampage - are so hilariously confusing you'll be happy to root for this mess anyway. Imagine watching a three legged dog successfully fight off a bunch of four legged dogs. Wouldn't you be so happy for that dog? Well at the end of Maniac Cop you'll roll your eyes, send it back to Netflix and get on with your life. You'll understand why it only made $671,382 at the box office, but you won't hate yourself for watching it. I say that's high praise for a Two Star Viking Night award winner.

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