Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Music Video Of The Day: Women by Def Leppard (1987, directed by Doug Freel and Jean Pellerin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This music video represents the fantasy of almost every 80s kid, skateboard wherever you want, read a comic book about your favorite hero having an amazing adventure, and doing it all while your favorite band performs behind you.

Depending on what part of the world you were living in, Women was either the first or the second single to be released off of Dep Leppard’s best-selling album, Hysteria.  Hysteria was a great album that was helped immeasurably by MTV.  Fans of the band already knew that Def Leppard rocked but MTV gave everyone the chance to watch them as they did so.

This was the first Dep Leppard video to be filmed after Rick Allen lost his left arm.  A good deal of the video’s popularity comes from Rick showing that he was still one of the best drummers in the business.

Enjoy!

Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence (1992, directed by William Lustig)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Despite finally getting his burial with honors at the end of Maniac Cop 2, Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar) returns for one last outing.  Raised from the dead by a voodoo houngan (Julius Harris), Cordell invades a hospital to seek vengeance for a comatose policewoman named Katie Sullivan (Gretchen Baker).  In a coma due to the wounds she received while thwarting a convenience store robbery, Katie is being framed by unscrupulous reporters and attorneys who claim that Katie was a bad cop who killed a clerk in cold blood.  Cordell sees Katie as being a fellow victim of anti-cop bias and he is not going to let anyone treat her with disrespect, which is something that two doctors (Robert Forster and Doug Savant) are unfortunate enough to discover.  Sean McKinney (Robert Davi) and Dr. Susan Lowery (Caitlin Dulany) try to figure out how to bring peace to the souls of both Cordell and Katie.

As opposed to the first two films, Maniac Cop III had a troubled production.  Lustig and screenwriter Larry Cohen wanted to set the film in a Harlem hospital and bring in an African-American detective to investigate Cordell’s activities.  The film’s Japanese producers insisted that Robert Davi return as the lead, even though the script’s lead character had little in common with the way Sean McKinney was portrayed in Maniac Cop 2.  Larry Cohen then refused to do any rewrites on the script unless he was paid more.  William Lustig filmed what he could and ended up with a 51-minute movie.  Extra scenes were directed by one of the film’s producers and the film was also padded out with outtakes from Maniac Cop 2.

The film is disjointed and there’s too much time devoted to Jackie Earle Haley playing a character who has much in common Leo Rossi’s serial killer from the second film.  (Haley’s performance is fine but the character feels superfluous).  But the movie’s hospital setting leads to some interesting kill scenes and Z’Dar and Davi both give good performances as two different types of maniac cops.  The supporting cast is full of good character actors like Haley, Forster, Savant, Julius Harris, Bobby Di Cicco, and Paul Gleason.  Despite the film’s flaws, Maniac Cop III is a solid ending for the trilogy.

Music Video of the Day: Are You Ready For Freddy? by the Fat Boys (1988, directed by Harvey Keith)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

I always assumed that this song was specifically written for one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies but actually, the Fat Boys were just fans of the movies and they decided to put a song about them on one of their albums.  The song was included in The Freddy Krueger Special, which aired on CBS in 1988.  That’s amazing to think that Freddy got his own primetime special.

This video, which features several of Freddy’s victims and Robert Englund himself, was written by Wes Craven and directed by Harvey Keith.  Keith directed a few films, including 1988’s Mondo New York and 1990’s Jezebel’s Kiss.

Enjoy!

Maniac Cop 2 (1990, directed by William Lustig)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Maniac Cop 2 picks up where the first Maniac Cop ended.

The NYPD thinks that the undead maniac cop Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar) has been destroyed but he is actually still alive and killing civilians and cops in New York.  He has even teamed up with a serial killer named Steven Turkell (Leo Rossi, ranting and raving like a pro).  Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell) and Theresa Malloy (Laurene Landon) both return from the first film but both of them are killed by Cordell before the movie is even halfway over.  Maniac Cop 2 is not playing around.

With Jack and Theresa gone, it falls to Detective Sean McKinney (Robert  Davi) and Officer Susan Riley (Claudia Christian) to discover what the rest of the audience already knows, that Cordell is seeking revenge against the system that abandoned him in prison.  The new police commissioner, Ed Doyle (Michael Lerner), is determined to cover up what happened but Cordell is even more determined to have his vengeance.  Working with Turkell, Cordell heads to the prison where he was unjustly incarcerated and murdered.

Maniac Cop 2 is a marked improvement on the first film.  Cordell is no longer a lumbering and slow monster.  He is now a ruthless, Terminator-style executioner who, in the film’s best-known scene, wipes out an entire police precinct in a matter of minutes.  Cordell is so ruthless that he won’t even stop when he’s on fire.  His partnership with Turkell adds a new twist to the Maniac Cop saga.  Turkell views Cordell as his partner-in-crime but Cordell is only interested in getting his revenge.  (Turkell was originally meant to be Frank Zito, the main character from Lustig’s Maniac.  When Maniac star Joe Spinell died before shooting began, the role was changed to Leo Rossi’s Steven Turkell.)

Stepping into the shoes of the main investigation, Robert Davi gives one of his best performances.  As opposed to the boring heroes of the first film (sorry, Bruce!), Davi’s Sean McKinney is just as obsessive and ruthless as Cordell.  Cordell sets fire and McKinney uses those fires to light his cigarettes.

William Lustig has described Maniac Cop 2 as being his best film and he’s probably right.  It is definitely the best of the Maniac Cop films and the only one to fully take advantage of its premise.

Music Video of the Day: Can I Play with Madness by Iron Maiden (1988, directed by Julian Doyle)

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Director Julian Doyle also directed videos for Kate Bush but he may be best known for working as an editor on several Monty Python and Terry Gilliam films, including Life of Brian, Time Bandits, The Meaning of Life, Brazil, and Terry Jones’s Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

Enjoy!

Maniac Cop (1988, directed by William Lustig)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In New York City, murders are being committed by a hulking man dressed in a policeman’s uniform.  The NYPD brass (led by William Smith and Richard Roundtree) want to cover up the fact that the murders are being committed by an apparent maniac cop but Lt. Frank McRae (Tom Atkins) leaks the news to the press.  With the citizens taking up arms against cops, the brass is eager to frame adulterous cop Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell) for not only murdering his wife but also committing all of the murders.  Lt. McRae believes that Jack is innocent.

Why is the brass so eager to frame Jack?  Maybe it’s because they know that the Maniac Cop is actually Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar), a formerly good cop who was sent to Sing Sing on  trumped up brutality charges.  Cordell was killed in prison but he has now come back to life and is seeking revenge on the police force that he feels betrayed him.

Written by Larry Cohen and directed by William Lustig, Maniac Cop is the first of three Maniac Cop films.  While the other two Maniac Cop movies largely work and hold up well, the first Maniac Cop is undoubtedly the worst of the trilogy, with most of the kills occurring offscreen and the action moving very slowly.  The film is full of genre vets and Tom Atkins gives another one of this good tough guy performances.  Bruce Campbell disappointingly plays his role straight and Robert Z’Dar, as intimidating as he is, is actually underused in this film.

As with most films written by Cohen, Maniac Cop has an interesting political subtext.  It focuses on cop brutality and corruption with Cordell becoming a symbol of most people’s mixed feelings about the police.  But the Maniac Cop trilogy wouldn’t really come to life until the second film.  The first spends a lot of time setting Cordell up as a relentless avenger but there’s not much of pay-off.

Big Freakin’ Snake (2023, directed by Dustin Ferguson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

People are being killed in snake attacks across Los Angeles and the sheriff and a scientist are determined to discover why.  The Sheriff says that there hasn’t been a snake attack in over 40 years.  His father dealt with the last batch of attacks.  Now, it’s time for the new sheriff to pick up his father’s legacy and discover why people are dying from snake attack.

Could it be because of the big freakin’ snake!?

Nah, son, that snake’s not that big.

There actually is a big snake at the start of the movie, which slithers its way through Los Angeles and wraps itself around a building but most of the movie is just scenes of people screaming at normal sized snakes that don’t appear to actually be aggressive.  A lot of familiar B-horror folk show up to get bitten but the special effects budget only allowed for one actual snake attack to really be shown.  If you’ve ever wanted to watch Brinke Stevens fight a rubber snake in a bathtub, this film is for you.

Big Freakin’ Snake is short, only 40 minutes long, and it is obviously not meant to be taken seriously so I can’t criticize it too much.  But for a movie called Big Freakin’ Snake, it sure didn’t have many big snakes.

Music Video of the Day: Prison Sex by Tool (1993, directed by Adam Jones)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When a song has a title like Prison Sex, you can be sure that it won’t be a happy one.  Tool’s Prison Sex is a song (and a video) that was judged to be so disturbing and depressing that MTV actually removed it from its playlist after viewers complained that it was freaking them out.  Despite removing the video, MTV still nominated for a Video Music Award for Best Visual Effects and the video was later riffed on by Beavis and Butt-Head.

The video was directed by Adam Jones, who is also Tool’s guitarist.  Along with his musical interests, Jones also worked in stop motion animation and was even a part of the team that brought the dinosaurs to life in the original Jurassic Park.  This video makes good and macabre use of his talents.

Enjoy!

Bunni (2013, directed by Daniel Benedict)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

On Halloween night, two couples leave a Halloween party and, while walking down the street, discover a deserted building.  One of them recognizes the building as being a former sex shop and he insists that he and his friends break in.  Unfortunately, for them, the sex shop is not actually deserted.  Bunni (Cat Geary), a woman who was raped 18 years previously and got a gruesome revenge on her attacker, is also in the building and she’s looking for more victims.

Bunni is full of gore, much of it shown in closeup.  Things that other films would cut away from, Bunni zooms in on.  If you want to see a man get his dick chopped off and then have the severed member stuffed down his throat in close-up, this is your movie.  If you want to see guts literally pour out of a body, this is your movie.  If the main reason you’re watching this movie is for the gore and the sense of transgression, more power to you.  You will like this film.  But me, I would have traded the gore for a compelling plot or at least one interesting character or maybe just one scene that, visually, reached above the level of a youtube video.  Some people will find what they’re looking for with this movie.  I did not.