Event

Maniac

In Person: Director William Lustig

Admission includes post-screening reception.

New 35mm print. Frank Zito is one hell of a strange, scary dude. He lives in a shabby rathole apartment in a not-so-great neighborhood in NYC, where his already unstable mindset is given free reign to grow progressively more disturbed. It seems that Frank is the victim of unspeakable (and mostly only hinted-at) childhood abuses at the hands of his mother (of course), leaving our hero with a bit of a grudge against women. So, he acts out by slicing, dicing, shooting, stabbing, strangling, and yes...scalping his prey. With each successive kill, Frank grows more and more detached from reality. When he meets a beautiful, swingin' fashion photographer, it seems at first as if Frank might have hit on his one chance at a "normal" relationship. It isn't meant to be, of course, and soon, he makes his psychotic moves on her as well. Naturally, she makes tracks away from him, leaving him all alone again. In this state, Frank makes his final descent into complete madness and utter depravity.

USA, 1980, 87 min.