Bill Lustig's MANIAC gets a 4K-mastered overhaul for Blue Underground's 3-disc limited edition set.

Desperately wanting to be reunited with his prostitute mother who was taken away from him by a car accident when he was a child, Frank Zito (Joe Spinell, ROCKY) has been brutally murdering and scalping loose women – from hookers, to necking couples, to models and nurses who have the temerity to walk home alone at night ("I warned you not to go out tonight," he tells his mother surrogates) – throughout the New York boroughs, earning him the brand "maniac" in the newspaper headlines. Tacking his trophy scalps to the heads of mannequins, he sleeps with his mother surrogates before keeping them as a captive audience as he adds more and more to his apartment shrine to his dead mother. Zito eventually makes the acquaintance of photographer Anna (Caroline Munro, CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER) who not only inadvertently gives him access to her models but whose long mane seems like a fitting addition to his collection.

Producer Andrew Garroni had been the American production manager on Dario Argento's INFERNO and decided along with writer/director Bill Lustig (MANIAC COP) to take the $10,000 he had made from the film and start filming. Initially conceived along the lines of more conventional seventies serial killer films – in Panavision with Dolby Stereo sound – with Jason Miller (THE EXORCIST) top-billed as a detective whose character is entirely absent from the finished film, the project was stripped down out of financial necessity to focus on Spinell's killer, his outer and inner world, his stalkings, and a love interest who would effect the conclusion. Due to Lustig's friendship with Argento, he was intended to contribute some funding, Goblin doing the scoring, and his then-wife Daria Nicolodi would play the female lead. When Nicolodi got a part in an Italian mini-series, the Argento deal fell by the wayside, and they were also without a heroine until Spinell ran into Caroline Munro – with whom he had previously appeared in Luigi Cozzi's STARCRASH – at a convention and convinced her to appear in the film; whereupon her then-husband Judd Hamilton, who was fostering Munro's career as a singer, became involved financially. After roughly forty minutes of increasingly grim and harrowing stalking set-pieces with some at-times too-convincing effects work by Tom Savini (DAWN OF THE DEAD), Munro is a breath of fresh air that opens up the film but has in the past seemingly purely commercially-motivated; however, it does seem more credible that Munro artist character could appreciate Zito's quirkiness and his philosophy of possessing his subjects through artistic depiction (although she believes that he is a painter). Spinell carries the film, however, and the disc's extras reveal just how much his input influenced the finished film. Some of Savini's effects also seem like either prep work or repeats of techniques he would use around the same period in films like THE BURNING and THE PROWLER (including some bayonet stabbings and a head exploding from a shotgun blast with more proficiency than the earlier DAWN OF THE DEAD effect). Although Lustig had composer Jay Chattaway (SILVER BULLET) listen to Goblin scores, his synthesizer work for MANIAC seems less-influenced by the Italian prog-rock group and more motivated by giving the aural equivalent of the film's eye-punishing gore. The end result seems tailor-made for 42nd street, having less in common with the seventies serial killer films or Italian gialli and more thematically with DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE – particularly the film's quasi-supernatural climax, with Spinell carrying on both sides of his delusional conversations rather than Dan Grimaldi (THE SOPRANOS) arguing with the voices in his head – and structurally with the somewhat more mainstream EYES OF THE STRANGER (which also featured effects by Savini). Lightning did not strike twice when Spinell and Munro reunited in Cannes for a more comic take on similar themes with THE LAST HORROR FILM with Hamilton, Spinell's personal assistant Luke Walter, and actor-turned-DTV director David Winters both in front of and behind the camera. Spinell tried to get a MANIAC 2 off the ground, with COMBAT SHOCK's Buddy Giovinazzo producing a promo film with him, but the closest he came to it was the 1988 direct-to-video effort THE UNDERTAKER, the director's cut of which was re-edited and padded with footage from THE CORPSE VANISHES and retitled THE DEATH MERCHANT. MANIAC was remade in 2012 by P2's Franck Khalfoun from a script by Alexandre Aja (HIGH TENSION) and Grégory Levasseur (who scripted Aja's THE HILLS HAVE EYES remake) with Elijah Wood in the lead.

Released unrated theatrically by Analysis Film Releasing Corporation – whose roster included the likes of CALIGULA, MY BRILLIANT CAREER, THE INNOCENT, and BASKET CASE – MANIAC lingered on the home video shelves next to Richard Compton's like-titled film (originally ASSAULT IN PARADISE). Although the film received a laserdisc release in Japan in the mid-eighties, it was not until 1995 that Lustig – who had already produced some laserdiscs like Image Entertainment's widescreen edition of SUSPIRIA – got the film onto the format through a deal with Elite Entertainment. The special edition featured a widescreen transfer with a Dolby Surround encoding of the Dolby Stereo track, a commentary by Lustig, editor Lorenzo Marinelli (A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER), Walter, and Savini, a host of international trailers, TV spots, and radio spots, and Giovinazzo's MANIAC 2 promo. This laserdisc edition was a director's cut in which Lustig removed the dinner scene between Spinell and Munro as well as shortening the scene with Spinell and the prostitute. Elite's non-anamorphic DVD recycled the transfer and carried over the extras with the addition of a 5.1 soundtrack but the film would not be restored to its original length and anamorphically upgraded until Anchor Bay's 2001 steelbook and standard DVDs which added 5.1 EX and DTS 6.1 tracks as well as the 2001 documentary "The Joe Spinell Story" and a radio interview with Lustig, Spinell, and Munro. Blue Underground ported over the transfer and extras for their 2007 DVD.

Blue Underground created a new HD master in 2010 for their Blu-ray which added on a second commentary by Lustig and producer Garroni as well as new interviews on a bonus DVD. The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer, however, looked radically different from the DVDs, seeming overly bright with grayish black levels and a bit soft. Blue Underground's 4K-mastered 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray is scanned from the rediscovered 16mm original camera negative and looks quite stunning given the film's low budget. While still gritty, it is perhaps less appropriate to describe the 4K remaster as "looking like 35mm" than the earlier edition as looking like a blow-up of 16mm, with lab TVC's ChemTone push processing extending the film speed during the night scenes. Fine detail is stunning from the agonized features of Spinell's sweaty face to the 42nd street locations, and the colors look even richer than they did on the DVD editions without seeming boosted. Audio options include an English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo rendering of the film's Dolby Stereo track as well as a DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 remix in which thunder, distant sirens, wind, and waves get surround treatment while the score also becomes unnerving at times with its extended depth. Dubs include Dolby Digital 2.0 mono tracks in French, German, Italian, and Castilian Spanish, along with English SDH subtitles, and subtitles in Chinese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Thai.

Extras start off with the audio commentary by Lustig and producer Garroni in which they reveal that the opening beach sequence is a nod to the initial concept suggested by actor Frank Pesce (KILLER FISH) as "JAWS on land" (the first victim was the daughter of Luke Walter), while Garroni hashes out the story about Dario Argento's INFERNO and Nicolodi set to co-star. Both provide plenty of Spinell stories while Garroni also reveals that the 35mm aerial shots were grabbed from INFERNO when they were deemed unusable due to camera shake, that Garroni's father shot some second unit, and that Spinell and Walter would also go out and shoot some footage after hours (some of which was used like the scene in which Zito encounters the store window mannequin). They also reveal that Sylvester Stallone paid back Spinell's support of him as a young unknown by casting him in ROCKY and ROCKY II, and that the latter film's make-up department would make Spinell up after the shoot so that he could go back and do pick-up shots on MANIAC. The more lively earlier track with Lustig, editor Marinelli, Walter, and Savini includes more Spinell discussions, the resources of off-duty cop Randy Jurgensen (who had worked with Spinell on THE FRENCH CONNECTION), and Savini's reactions to some of Spinell's suggestions to go further with the gore, Walter having to drive the car after Savini blew off his own head and still getting tickets for it after he abandoned the unusable vehicle, as well as Lustig's own doubts at the time as to how the film would fare in theaters and at Cannes (while Spinell was always certain it would be a "happening"). Most impressive is the gallery of international advertising for the film that Lustig has collected over the years, including U.S. "hard" (1:32) and "soft" trailers (1:18), an international trailer (3:46), French trailer (1:22) from Rene Chateau, German teaser (0:55) and trailer (2:50), and a Italian trailer (3:24), as well as nine U.S. TV spots (3:08), and four radio spots (3:21), not unlike the array assembled by Lustig for his earlier DVD and Blu-ray releases of VIGILANTE. An Easter Egg features EXORCIST director William Friedkin's appreciation of the film (0:54).

The previous thirtieth-anniversary edition featured a bonus DVD of extra featurettes, but Blue Underground has taken advantage of two newly-produced featurettes to give the entire bonus disc a Blu-ray bump up. First up is a series of outtakes () discovered in a California lab with commentary by Lustig that includes the footage intended for the original credits sequence, some extended bits from the beach scene, more of the footage shot by Spinell and Walter, shots of cold actresses, and the intended final shot. The other new featurette is "Returning to the Scene of the Crime with Bill Lustig" (7:53) in which the director revisits the films locations as they looked then and now, including the usual remarks about how 42nd street has changed. "Anna and the Killer" (13:04) is an interview with actress Munro in which she recalls meeting Spinell on STARCRASH, him pushing her to take the role of Anna just as she was due to return to London, and her interpretation of the relationship between their characters (suggesting that they are both asexual). "The Death Dealer" (12:07) features Savini recalling the slasher trend of the era and turning down multiple films before accepting MANIAC despite Spinell wanting to do a scene in which he bites something off "down there" from one of his victims, blowing up the prop head of his own likeness, and recovering from his nose job in the apartment of his co-star in the scene Hyla Marrow (THE DEATH COLLECTOR) who he was seeing at the time.

"Dark Notes" (12:12) is an interview with composer Chattaway who recalls working as an arranger and uncredited composer of additional themes on Gato Barbieri's score for FIREPOWER when he was offered MANIAC. He had no experience with horror films but was given creative freedom and came up with the flute theme for Zito. He recalls being touched by the creative collaboration and family atmosphere on the film that he found absent from larger projects. "Maniac Men" (10:35) is an interview with songwriters Michael Sembello and Dennis Matkosky whose song "Maniac" for FLASHDANCE was inspired by news stories about Gacy and not the film as Spinell insisted over the years; however, they did watch MANIAC while researching the original more violent lyrics they had composed as a lark before needing to clean them up for the Adrian Lyne film. Carried over from the Anchor Bay DVD onwards is "The Joe Spinell Story" (49:19), an affectionate documentary featuring input from Lustig, Walter, actors Richard Lynch (BAD DREAMS), Jason Miller (THE EXORCIST), Robert Forster (VIGILANTE), Pesce, Munro, and John Scott (CERTAIN FURY), as well as COMBAT SHOCK director Giovinazzo and THE UNDERTAKER director William Kennedy, along with Spinell's sister Grace Raimo. They recall his beginnings as an actor – with Raimos getting him a role in THE GODFATHER by writing to author Mario Puzzo who was married to a friend – and his bravado in convincing filmmakers to give him roles, his wild partying including the brawl that got him and Miller arrested in Hungary during THE NINTH CONFIGURATION (for which Lynch had to sneak money into the country to bail them out), his short marriage to adult film actress Jean Jennings (THE DEFIANCE OF GOOD) after which he moved back in with his mother and his downward spiral after her death, followed by his eventual passing after a fight he picked (despite being a hemophiliac). MANIAC is discussed at length as well as THE LAST HORROR FILM, in which a combination of shooting on the fly and Spinell's partying quadrupled the budget. Giovinazzo's "Mr. Robbie" MANIAC 2 Promo (7:24) is also included here.