Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence

After the second installment, the maniacal prune Matt Cordell is six feet underground with his chin up (meaning he's roughly level with the ground). But with a few voodoo spells, he's up and running again! The script problems, which Larry Cohen refused to rewrite according to the producers' demands, have left a mark on this, and after William Lustig's directorial improvisation, some filler had to be shot to make it at least eighty minutes long (e.g., the first third is filled with flashbacks and Maniac Cop just wanders around the city, swinging his baton like a majorette). Positives? Slightly spiritual Candyman-like music by Jerry Goldsmith’s son and Robert Davi's character, who delivers lines that dry up the Hudson. His Lieutenant McKinney is quite the character, whether he's measuring dicks and clits at the shooting range or needs to light a cigarette after action, with a Zippo that’s not cool enough. A charred, groping hand hinted at something in the very end, but the creators probably realized they had nothing more to offer. (06/07/2024)

Lustig understands that he’s going to make a dark murder look like a couple of shootouts, and he does put decent effort into it. On the other hand, no one explained to Cohen that he can’t keep on writing the same thing and expect it to be relevant, and so the entire film is in the spirit of shamanic rituals, loving outpourings, and toothless tension. There’s also a lot of dialogue, the topics of which are hopelessly stuck in the first film, stretching the 85-minute runtime to an unbearable limit, with the film eventually falling flat with the director's resignation and the director’s unabashed stealing from his past works. A sad end to my childhood serial killer legend. (07/17/2007)