Harefooted Halloween: Maniac Cop 2

What I Liked: There’s an excellent car chase sequence with the maniac cop, Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar (Mobsters)), in his old 60’s squad car pursuing some victims in a cab.  A couple of the tires on the taxi blow so the metal wheels grind against the pavement creating tons of sparks (which apparently caused the car to catch fire for real halting production).  Directly after this the murderous cop handcuffs one of his targets to the wheel of another car and sets it into neutral sending the thing careening uncontrollably down the road.  Oh and did I mention this person is handcuffed to the outside of the car which ups the ante considerably?  This stretch is maybe the best set piece in either film.  Not only that but towards the end Cordell does an entire hand to hand fight scene on fire and it’s ambitious due to the sheer length of it.  Some of these stunts are incredibly dangerous and I’m impressed with what they put together.

What I Didn’t Like: The backstory and lore isn’t expanded upon at all.  We don’t get any further insight into Matt Cordell or his crimes.

Fuckin’ Robert Davi (Showgirls) plays the detective in charge of tracking down the killer cop this time and shit, he’s completely wasted here.  Davi does his usual stoic cool as all hell routine but the character doesn’t end up doing anything.  I mean (minor spoiler) he’s not even part of the finale.

Overall Impressions: The first film is a hybrid of horror and action making it somewhat unique.  It’s a detective movie with a slasher spirit.  This one leans much more to the action side with two car chases and a part inspired by (ripped off from?) The Terminator where Cordell storms into a police precinct and blows all the cops away in a glut of massive destruction.  The horror elements are fairly subdued and extend to Cordell’s now rotting zombified face and play with the ambiguity of if he’s supernatural or not.  Sometimes he seems like he is, sometimes he doesn’t.  I dunno.

Unfortunately nothing new is done with the premise or the characters.  The plot is very simple involving a police psychologist (Claudia Christian (The Substitute 3: Winner Takes All)) and a detective (Davi) trying to find and stop Cordell.  They repeat a couple of full scenes from the original to pad the runtime too which is kind of annoying.

This is a tough one because while it’s not really as good as its predecessor things even out with this film having the two best action sequences between them.  If you enjoyed the first one then yeah, this is worth your time.