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.