Maniac (2012) Review

Guess what’s now available on VOD?  Ha-hah!  The Maniac remake is! Watched it starting at 12:01 AM Friday morning, and if you saw the original on VHS like I did, you’ll be pleasantly (if that’s the word) surprised. I kept hoping they wouldn’t fuck the final scene (the one from the original Maniac pictured above in the ‘feature image’) up. Nope! They did not! Nicotero-Berger took over from Tom Savini on the PRACTICAL EFX and paid full tribute. Our review to follow- here’s Rob Nelson’s on Variety.com.

The Top Ten Horror Movies Our Hearts Are Pounding To See In 2013, Why They’re On Horror Boom’s Most Anticipated List, Plus Extras!

First, a quick site update (more to come). So, the holidays came so fast our ‘Christmas/Holiday Countdown’ consisted of exactly two holiday-themed posts (one, if you don’t count the actual Christmas greeting that contained this commercial). We were planning a sorta “Twelve Days Of Christmas” countdown. Even had notes jotted down for this grandiose scheme. Example- On the first day of Christmas, Horror Boom gave to Me- The Collector’s Backstory! On the second day, two reasons to avoid escalators (clip from Terror Firmer, Final Destination 4 clip) etc. all the way up to “Ten Dr. West jokes” and “Twelve Romero Zombie Kills”. That turned out to be waaaaaay  too ambitious. First problem, we came up with the idea ten days before Christmas, before we even wrote anything.  OK, let’s see, we could retro-post a few of them, let’s get working on that, first we got to take care of holiday shopping, but now we can catch up and (blink) oh, hey! It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow! Shit, we gotta get started on our wrapping! (blink) Wow, we need to send thank-you notes for those cool gifts.

OK, on to that 2013 projects/movies list!

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So, we were chatting with friends and started naming off our top five we were drooling to see. I went to jot them down, and realized there were ten movies we were all hopped up for.  Mrs. Horror Boom here got an actual adrenaline rush just writing the complete list down and seeing all ten at once. OK, if you want to get technical, one item on the list are the final four episodes of a certain TV show (that will air starting January second), but we doubt we’ll get  complaints on that, judging from the fact at least 50% of our traffic come from various American Horror Story Asylum-related searches (especially those tagged with “Pinhead Pepper”).

We couldn’t find a graceful way to include this in the title, but these are all coming out in the first half of 2013. Many will hit before Spring is officially here. After Memorial Day, we’ll probably do a list for the second half. Some of these all of us horror fans have been waiting for over 6 months (and almost a year on Inbred’s U.S. release). The ABCS os Death was supposed to be an early October release, for God’s sake.

There’s no way we’d get the list out in a timely manner if we attempted to rank them in order of excitement, so we decided to go with the release dates- first come, first written about.

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Here’s the entire list- we’ll go back and add links to the pieces focusing on each one as they get published. Also, these are in no particular order; we’re having trouble hunting down the release dates on several. Until then, several have previously written pieces with trailers and/or other cool stuff. We’ll take those down when we put up the links to the new spotlight pieces on each one. So let’s get it on!

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Most Anticipated Horror Movies of 2013
1. The ABCs of Death
2.  Maniac  re-boot
3.  Chan Wook Park’s  Stoker
4.  Mama
5. Carrie re-boot
6. American Mary
7.  Evil Dead re-boot (Raimi, Tapert, and Campbell approved)
8.  Inbred (US release)
9.  [REC] 4 – Apocalypse
10. “The Name Game”, “Spilt Milk, ” Continuum”,  and “Madness Ends”- AKA, the final four episodes (a little over roughly a mere three more hours) that will bring American Horror Story Asylum roaring through to the finish line of this American Horror Story chapter. 

If you’re looking for air dates, you can peep them here.  I highly doubt that we’re alone when we say we’re not ready to say goodbye yet to this cast of characters, and this story! 

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The final four episodes of American Horror Story Asylum are a great jumping off point for our list, and the first of the final four acts (The Name Game) is a matter of days away (January 2nd). So, read on about AHSA’s “final four” coming up next…

Red Band Trailer of the Week – “Maniac” Remake (2012) Doesn’t Screw Around

I still remember watching William Lustig‘s original Maniac  (1980) …on a VHS tape rental in my bedroom in high school; I had lugged the TV set and VCR in there because I was stuck in bed nursing a flu at the time.

I’m pretty sure Maniac  (along with a few other serial-killer horror movies; I saw Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer  at SIFF in 1990 and purchased my first purse-sized canister of pepper spray shortly after) was a big part of the reason I took the first “Self-Defense for Women” class I could find (and the second, and the third, and the…) and developed habits that I keep to this day, like always having my car keys in my hand by the time I left a building to walk through the parking lot to my car, even if it’s only ten yards away. Also probably among the reasons why, after dark, I keep them in my hand, with the self-defense trick of holding them in your fist with the pointy end of the keys jammed between my fingers and pointing out, so you have a better chance of breaking your attacker’s skin, or putting out an eye, if you need to strike out to defend yourself.

Frank Zito’s victims get themselves some payback in the fucking blood-curdling, nightmarish finale of the original Maniac (1980).

Here’s the HD red band trailer for the Maniac (2012)  remake – there’s a separate piece coming on why I’m actually optimistic about the chances of it being successful. Don’t expect to see the titular character Frank Zito even remotely resembling Joe Spinell, though!

*I didn’t actually SEE it in 1980 (that’d be a great movie for a girl still  in elementary school to watch, scarred for life? Check!), I think it was 1984.  My mom would buy me a Fangoria–and even Famous Monsters Magazine– in 1981, though.  Towards the end of the run of Famous Monsters of Filmland, I had a subscription. I wish I’d held onto it!