Maniac, Maniac on the Floor: William Lustig Double Feature

Despite what Mountain Dew commercials may have taught you, “extreme” has very little to do with jumping out of airplanes strapped to a snowboard or whatever. We know this because here in Austin, “extreme” is something we all enjoy on occasion. Call it part of our “Keep Austin Weird” approach to life.

Tuesday night, you can get your extreme slasher movie fix with a couple of classic films that pushed the “horror/gore” envelope, AND you can talk with the guy who created them. Join director William Lustig as he screens the 1980 classic Maniac and 1990’s Maniac Cop 2.

The titles pretty much tell you all you need to know. The deeply disturbing Maniac follows a serial killer whose hobbies include scalping victims and putting those scalps on mannequins. About screenwriter and star Joe Spinell’s performance as the homicidal title character, Lustig has said: “I don’t think there has ever been a character in a film of that kind that haunted people since Anthony Perkins in Psycho.”

While it sounds like it might be part of the same series, Maniac Cop 2 is a whole other kind of horror film. It’s about a massive, monstrous, and impossible-to-kill psycho law enforcement official who somehow survived the original Maniac Cop. (Don’t worry, you don’t need to have seen Part One to keep up.) In this one, he teams up with another serial killer to wreak havoc on the police force who wronged him, including the always entertaining Bruce Campbell.

Lustig’s films have been called every bad thing in the book by plenty of critics, and for only one reason: they pushed the envelope further than people like it pushed, showing violence, pain, mayhem, and death. These films revealed a deep dark part of the human soul that the rest of us dare not even imagine. Also, they’re bloody as all hell.

Maniac screens at 7 and Maniac Cop 2 at 10, so pick what kind of mood you’re in (trailers are below to help you decide) or buy tix to both and get ready to be thoroughly entertained by some of the most over the top slasher/splatter/horror craziness there is. And we mean that in the best possible way, of course.