Maniac Cop 2

Maniac Cop 2 (1990)

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Apparently sent immediately after the events of Maniac Cop, it turns out that maniac cop (Robert Z'Dar) didn't die when he got impaled and cast into the river at the end of the first movie and is still thirsty for vengeance. But I mean, he was already dead in the first movie, right? Or was he just disfigured and brain damaged? I don't know how this movie works.

Anyway, the first thing he does with his re-life is go and kill Bruce Campbell and Laurene Landon, presumably because they were contractually obliged to be in this movie but not happy about it. They are replaced by two other cops who have no discernible personality traits except one is grumpy and the other is not grumpy (Robert Davi and Claudia Christian, respectively) He then teams up with a Charles Manson looking mother fucker (Leo Rossi) who gets his jollies by killing strippers. I don't know why he teams up with that guy or really what else happens in this movie because I wasn't paying attention.

This one manages to have an even more arbitrary and uninteresting plot than the first movie, but there was a lot more violence so it seemed more exciting.

Pretty much the same things happen in this movie as did in the first, as far as I can tell. Maniac cop kills a couple of civilians for no really good reason, maniac cop takes out a police station (this time, though, he goes around smashing through glass doors like a fucking mad man), maniac cop has some beef with somebody.

His kills were more brutal in this movie though. There's one particularly inspired scene where he impales a guy on the hook of a tow truck and then drive away like a fucking asshole. He also gets set on fire at the end of the movie and still runs around killing the guys that killed him in jail.

I have mad respect for whoever did the stunts for this movie coz there's a couple pretty damn long shots where buddy is on fire and just fucking going like a champ. That shit's dangerous. You go, sir. Also, whoever was walking through those glass doors I mentioned earlier, that was probably a bitch to do too.

Still, I don't really understand this movie. Like, what did maniac cop need a murder friend for? I will admit I was not paying attention for large swaths of movie, but I feel like a movie should command my attention, and if it can't do that, it should make character's motivations simple enough for my easily-distracted brain to grasp. The script was all over the place too and there was a lot of unnecessary information that ended up with me just tuning everything out.

But yeah, he doesn't just have a murder friend that he hangs out and does murders with. I could understand maybe if I liked to murder people on the regular, maybe I would like to have a friend who shared that interest. That makes sense to me. I didn't get why he went to the bother of busting him out of jail, and then taking him to the prison with him to get revenge on the guys who killed and/or disfigured him, and then killing him along with those guys. So there was probably a more complicated reason for it. Or maybe not? Maybe it was just for lols, I don't know.

Also, what the fuck is the deal with maniac cop? Is he dead? Is he not dead? Was he alive in the last movie and dead now? In the last movie he just had some Joker scars going on but in this one he's pretty fucked up looking. Like he's missing an ear and a lot of skin and shit. And I'm pretty sure taking a steel beam through the chest isn't survivable without serious medical attention which maniac cop would not have had time to get, so, okay, he's definitely undead in this one. But what about the last one? Why doesn't the movie tell me? That's not mysterious in a movie like this, it's lazy, and the fact that, even though I "supposedly" don't care, I've spent two reviews asking this same question is really bothering me.

Despite the fact that this series (so far, fingers crossed for Maniac Cop 3) makes no fucking sense whatsoever, this one was action packed and ridiculous enough that I didn't care so much about it's shortcomings.

Merits
- Bruce Campbell, Danny Trejo, and Sam Raimi are in this movie (+3)
- Chainsaw stopping action (+1)
- Window smashing action (+1)
- Car towing action (+1)
- Fiery action (+1)
- Titties! (+1)

Total: (+8)

Demerits
- Bruce Campbell makes it, like, ten minutes (-1)
- Is maniac cop a zombie? What the fuck (-1)
- Why (-1)

Total: (-3)

Final Score: 5 Stars

Directed by: William Lustig.  Written by: Larry Cohen.  Starring: Claudia Christian, Robert Davi, Robert Z'Dar, Leo Rossi, Laurene Landon, Bruce Campbell, Michael Lerner, Clarence Williams III.